RPA Profile

Katherine is a member of the RPA leadership board and a representative of the School of Humanities.

Professional Profile

Dr. Shwetz's research draws from both literary studies and the interdisciplinary medical humanities; her work examines how narrative form and medical beliefs are refracted through narratives about vaccines, contagion, and disease. Her current research project examines the role of literary genre in anti-vaccination conspiracies, with the goal of using the tools of literary analysis to sensitively analyze the charged contemporary conversations around vaccines. Her dissertation research studied how a range of intersecting anxieties about embodiment, community, and borders coalesce in narratives of contagion in contemporary Canadian fiction. Prior to joining Rice as a postdoctoral fellow, Katherine completed her PhD at the University of Toronto, her MA at Dalhousie University, and her BA Hon at the University of Saskatchewan.