Contagions of Empire

“This fascinating book not only offers a much needed theoretical intervention into questions of race, gender, biology, and sexuality in the context of militarism, but also is an impeccable work of history.” — Robert Reid-Pharr, Harvard University

“Blending deep and original archival research with cutting-edge theoretical argumentation, Polk offers us a startlingly innovative genealogy of black military labor and its discontents. Plumbing the legal, medical, and biopolitical resonances of the concept ‘immunity,’ this work recenters the lives and moral imagination of the ordinary black men and women who were conscripted into the project of U.S. empire but often resisted its racism and sexism.” — Tavia Nyongo, Yale University

“In Contagions of Empire, Khary Polk offers a theoretically and empirically rich explication of how African American bodies sat at the center of U.S. imperial projects and of how black military workers maneuvered discourses of health, sexuality, and racial affiliation to shape their relation to state power. Shedding light on histories of war and society, medicine, and black labor, the book gives a fresh and compelling take on African Americans as global subjects.” — Adriane Lentz-Smith, Duke University

“No other book offers such a superbly written and incisive analysis of the complex conditions faced by African Americans who served in the U.S. military during the country’s rise to a global empire, highlighting the contradictions of a nation claiming to be fighting wars of liberation abroad while Jim Crow segregation and racist terrorism were rampant at home.” — Jennifer Terry, University of California, Irvine