ABOUT THIS BOOK

Vermin—rats, cockroaches, pigeons, mosquitoes, and other pests—are, to most people, objects of disgust. And vermin metaphors, likening human beings to these loathed creatures, appear in the ugliest forms of political rhetoric. Indeed, vermin imagery has often been used to denigrate poor, foreign, or racialized people. Yet many writers have reclaimed vermin, giving new meaning to creeping rodents, swarming insects, and wriggling worms.

Notes on Vermin is an atlas of the literary vermin that appear in modern and contemporary literature, from Franz Kafka’s gigantic insect to Richard Wright’s city rats to Namwali Serpell’s storytelling mosquitoes. As parasites, trespassers, and collectives, vermin animals prove useful to writers who seek to represent life in the margins of power. Drawing on psychoanalysis, cultural studies, eco-Marxism, and biopolitics, this book explores four uses for literary vermin: as figures for the repressed thought, the uncommitted fugitive, the freeloading parasite, and the surplus life. In a series of short, accessible, interlinked essays, Notes on Vermin explores what animal pests can show us about our cultures, our environments, and ourselves.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Caroline Hovanec is Assistant Professor of English and Writing at the University of Tampa.

REVIEWS

“Politically astute and alert, nuanced, surprising, Notes on Vermin interrogates the overlooked and undervalued, offering new insights on the ‘verminous.’”— Fabienne Collignon, University of Sheffield

“For all their pervasiveness, surprisingly little critical attention has been paid to vermin. This lively and engaging study addresses this oversight, offering key insights into the literary uses (and abuses) of vermin. An indispensable resource for scholars working in Critical Animal Studies, as well as those interested in the unlovable creatures with which we share our world.”— Rachel Murray, University of Bristol

"In highlighting both the prevalence of vermin in modern literature and the benefits of combining animal studies with other interpretive lenses, Hovanec creates an approachable text that serves as a useful entry point into animal studies, vermin studies, and their productive links to other critical traditions."

— Katie A. Warczak, ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment

“A pioneering study of cultural representations of vermin, an overlooked group in Animal Studies. Hovanec shows the dialectics of vermin in our society that—alongside being objects of repulsion—serve as objects of fascination, identification, and desire.”— Naama Harel, Columbia University

“Erudite and beautifully written, Hovanec’s Notes on Vermin uses creepy possums, rambling boll weevils, and complicit parasites to articulate a nuanced, anti-racist biopolitics of late capitalism. This is the way to teach theory.”— Lucinda Cole, University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign

TABLE OF CONTENTS

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