ECU English professor wins international book award for second time
Dr. Andrea Kitta, associate professor of English at East Carolina University, has won the 2020 Brian McConnell Book Award for her recent book, “The Kiss of Death: Contagion, Contamination and Folklore,” which sheds light on how information and misinformation spread during an outbreak like COVID-19.
“All of these things happen every single time there’s a crisis. It’s just a matter of details,” said Kitta, in an ECU article about her recent book. “When faced with life-threatening disease, people crave information. It’s all too easy for misinformation or conspiracy thinking to fill those gaps.”Kitta is a two-time winner of the McConnell award. Her book “Vaccinations and Public Concern in History: Legend, Rumor and Risk Perception” was honored in 2012.
Given by the International Society for Contemporary Legend Research (ISCLR), the award recognizes and inspires standards of excellence in contemporary legend publications and encourages scholarship in the field. In addition, it commemorates the life and work of Brian McConnell, a longtime member of ISCLR, celebrated crime reporter, author and legend scholar.
“I’m really honored to win this award for a second time,” Kitta said. “The International Society for Contemporary Legend Research has been such a supportive and mentoring organization for me. The members have given me wonderful feedback at conferences, and I feel really encouraged by the leadership. It was a great honor to win the award in 2012 and even more of an honor that they chose my work again in 2020.”
Kitta is a folklorist with a specialty in medicine, belief and the supernatural. Her interests include internet folklore, narrative and contemporary (urban) legend. Currently, she researches vaccines, pandemic illness, contagion and contamination, stigmatized diseases, disability, health information on the internet and Slender Man. Her research on vaccines has won the Bernard Duval Prize at the Canadian Immunization Conference. Kitta is co-editor for Contemporary Legend, a scholarly journal published annually by the ISCLR.
In addition, Kitta has been fostering cats for Saving Graces 4 Felines for many years and currently is fostering two cats whose owner died due to COVID-19 (one of two deaths reported in Pitt County).