Andrea Kitta is a professor at East Carolina University, she received her MA in Folk Studies from Western Kentucky University and her PhD in Folklore from Memorial University of Newfoundland. She studies the intersection of belief, medicine, legends, and the supernatural and is the author of Vaccinations and Public Concern in History: Legend, Rumor, and Risk Perception and co-edited Diagnosing Folklore: Perspectives on Health, Trauma, and Disability. Her new book, The Kiss of Death: Contagion and Contamination in Folklore will be out this fall. Follow Andrea around the web here and here.