English Professor Examines Vaccine Skepticism in Theatre
A new book examining the bridges between medicine and the performing arts includes research on vaccine skepticism by Stanton B. Garner Jr., a professor in the English and theatre departments at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.
Garner wrote a chapter titled “At the Needle Point: Theatre and Vaccine Skepticism” in The Routledge Companion to Performance and Medicine. In it, he notes that vaccination raises a number of personal, social, and political issues, and he examines the connections between theatre and modern vaccination.
His chapter covers topics ranging from how playwrights have addressed vaccine hesitancy to how some countries have used live performances for immunization education.
“Even though I’m a firm believer in vaccination, I was amazed by the long history of vaccine skepticism and the many anxieties, experiences, and beliefs it draws upon. I understand it much better than I did,” said Garner, the James Douglas Bruce Professor of English and an affiliated professor of theatre.
“I was also fascinated by the use of community-based theatre in global vaccination campaigns,” he said. “Unlike television and radio, theatre reaches people where they live, and it allows them to participate.”
This isn’t the first time the professor has taken an interdisciplinary approach to examining performing arts. His 2023 book Theatre and Medicine explores contagion in the medical and metaphoric sense.
Garner noticed overlaps between the two fields a number of years ago, and the connection extends back centuries. “In ancient Athens, for instance, a shrine to Asklepios, the god of medicine, was situated next to the Theatre of Dionysos on the south slope of the Acropolis,” he noted.
By Amy Beth Miller