[02/19/26] Militello, Jennifer: Identifying the Pathogen

Tupelo Press, paperback

Publication Date: February 19, 2026

Publisher Marketing: A hybrid collection blending historical research and contemporary essays to consider the nature of oppressive marriage and gender inequity.

Composed as a lab notebook recording various surgeries, autopsies, and experiments, Identifying the Pathogen tells the story of a scientist on an obsessive quest to document an ailment that resists classification. The book considers the body in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, woven through with the story of Anna Morandi Manzolini--an eighteenth-century Italian anatomist and artist who struggled to support a husband suffering from depression--as well as several essays detailing accounts of a ruptured appendix, a splintered cello, and an ill-fated rock climbing excursion.