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Saugatuck Scribes: 'Unvaccinated Under God' by Kira Ganga Kieffer
Event Details
As part of our Saugatuck Scribes series spotlighting Westport authors, Kira Ganga Kieffer joins us for an intriguing discussion of her new book, Unvaccinated Under God: Religion and Vaccine Hesitancy in Modern America, in conversation with primary care physician, Dr. Caroline Andrew.
About Unvaccinated Under God
Vaccine hesitancy in America didn’t begin with the uproar over the mRNA vaccines for Covid-19. The late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries saw resistance to a wide variety of vaccines. In her new book, Kira Ganga Kieffer shows that debates over vaccine safety and mandatory vaccination were about more than diseases or injections. They have been proxies for existential concerns about justice and morality. Kieffer argues that vaccine hesitancy in the U.S. should be understood as religious expression — not as the product of scientific misinformation.
About the Author
Dr. Kira Ganga Kieffer is a scholar of American religions, history, culture, and politics with a PhD from Boston University. She is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Fairfield University and has previously taught at BU, University of Vermont, and Wesleyan University. Dr. Kieffer is a Westport native who graduated from Staples in 2004. She attended Brown University, where she graduated magna cum laude with Honors in Religion and History, in 2008. After college, she worked in marketing before pursuing a career in scholarship and writing. Dr. Kieffer now lives in Westport with her husband and daughter. Unvaccinated Under God: Religion and Vaccine Hesitancy in Modern America was published last month by Princeton University Press. It is her first book.
Dr. Caroline Andrew is a primary care physician with Stamford Health Medical Group in Wilton, and is board certified in internal medicine, obesity medicine and lifestyle medicine. After graduating from Staples in 2005, Dr. Andrew attended Brown University for both her undergraduate and medical degrees. She completed her internal medicine residency at New York Presbyterian-Weill Cornell and then a chief resident year at Memorial Sloan Kettering. She then completed a fellowship in obesity medicine at Weill Cornell. Dr. Andrew spent several years working at the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York City before moving to Weston, where she lives with her husband and two daughters.
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