This study identifies and explores the metaphor of "contagion" that both celebrates the diasporic spread of African culture, and serves as the justification of its repression. She compares the association of HIV with increased Western anxieties over the risks of other forms of "contagion" - accelerated economic, cultural and migrational flows around the globe - with the response of artists, who often reclaim the notion of African "infection" by suggesting that diasporic culture is contagious, irresistible - but vital, life-giving and productive. The essays in this book examine both the vital and violent ways in which recent associations have been made between the AIDS pandemic and African diasporic cultural practices, including religious worship, music, dance, sculpture, painting, orature, literature and film. While pointing to the lengthy and complex history of the metaphor of African contagion, Browning argues that in its politicized, life-affirming embodiment, the figure might actually teach us to respond to epidemia humanely.