History of the Anti-Vaccination Movement 

In today’s vaccination discourse are contemporary legends, rumor, and personal experience narratives, or in some cases a combination of
the three. This presentation explores beliefs and practices that surround decisions to not vaccinate.
Professor Kitta will explore the problems in communicating about risk which originate in the marked differences that exist between the two languages used to describe our experience with risks: the scientific and statistical language with experts on one hand and the intuitively grounded language of the public on the other.
Dr. Andrea Kitta is an Associate Professor of English at East Carolina University. She is interested in Internet folklore, narrative, and contemporary urban legend. Her current research includes: vaccines, pandemic illness, contagion, and contamination. She
is the recipient of the Bertie E. Fearing Award for Excellence in Teaching. Her monograph, Vaccinations and Public Concern
in History: Legend, Rumor, and Risk Perception, won the Brian McConnell Book Award in 2012. Her research on vaccines won the Bernard Duval Prize at the Canadian Immunization Conference and she received the Graduate Student Union’s Award for Teaching Excellence in 2008.