Outbreak narratives have proliferated for the past quarter century, and now they have reached epidemic proportions. From 28 Days Later to 24 to The Walking Dead, movies, TV shows, and books are filled with zombie viruses, bioengineered plagues, and disease-ravaged bands of survivors. Even news reports indulge in thrilling scenarios about potential global pandemics like SARS and Ebola. Why have outbreak narratives infected our public discourse, and how have they affected the way Americans view the world?

In Going Viral, Dahlia Schweitzer probes outbreak narratives in film, television, and a variety of other media, putting them in conversation with rhetoric from government authorities and news organizations that have capitalized on public fears about our changing world. She identifies three distinct types of outbreak narrative, each corresponding to a specific contemporary anxiety: globalization, terrorism, and the end of civilization. Schweitzer considers how these fears, stoked by both fictional outbreak narratives and official sources, have influenced the ways Americans relate to their neighbors, perceive foreigners, and regard social institutions. 

Looking at everything from I Am Legend to The X Files to World War Z, this book examines how outbreak narratives both excite and horrify us, conjuring our nightmares while letting us indulge in fantasies about fighting infected Others. Going Viral thus raises provocative questions about the cost of public paranoia and the power brokers who profit from it.  

Supplemental Study Materials for "Going Viral": https://www.rutgersuniversitypress.org/going-viral-dahlia-schweitzer
Dahlia Schweitzer- Going Viral: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5xF0V7WL9ow

DAHLIA SCHWEITZER is an adjunct professor at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California. She is the author of Cindy Sherman’s Office Killer: Another Kind of Monster.  Her website is http://ThisIsDahlia.com

"Schweitzer sets up shop at the intersection of culture, science and politics and demonstrates—with deep research and penetrating insight—that there are things far more menacing than viral threats."

"A good primer for students just getting used to the idea that there is something more to zombies and apocalyptic plague movies than meets the eye."

“Schweitzer's book is the clearest successor to [Susan] Sontag's essays that we have, but it takes Sontag's emphasis on the narratives of singular illnesses or viruses and broadens it to survey the metaphorics of virality, infection, and outbreak themselves--the locus of fear, anticipation, and knowledge about illness that predates and frames individuals' experience of illness and is the focal point of the narratives told about a complex array of phenomenon, from the AIDS crisis to the panic over Ebola, from the spread and threat of terrorism to the process of globalization, all culminating, it would seem, in the zombie renaissance of the 2000s."

"Going Viral promises to become a viral sensation. In this elegant, provocative and clever book, Dahlia Schweitzer tackles one of the most controversial and anxiety provoking fears of the twenty-first century: the disastrous end of the world, evoked by either plagues, infections, diseases or outbreaks. Full of knowledge and wit, Schweitzer's innovative scholarship is a joy to read. She is a trailblazer in transdisciplinary scholarship and helps us all better understand what will continue to keep us awake at night."

"An interesting examination of why we are so obsessed with viral outbreaks, zombies, and the end of the world."

"Her book is a well-placed contribution for theorizing about the enormous contemporary popularity of films about pandemics and zombies, and her analyses are generally convincing....There are many pertinent insights here [and] this is a book that had to be written, and all things considered Schweitzer did an admirable job."

"[Going Viral] brings welcome attention to [the outbreak narrative], as indeed does the outbreak narrative itself: it confronts its viewers with the tension between impersonal, unintentional networks and the human response in a world in which both the “human” and human agency are increasingly eroded by those same networks."

Fan Theory interview with Dahlia Schweitzer 

"Dahlia Schweitzer is one of the world’s leading analysts of popular culture, in every conceivable manifestation. She is also one of our best writers: engaging, concise, yet alluring in the best sense. Going Viral takes on one of the questions of our time: the American obsession with sickness as a way of dealing with difference. Bravo!"

"Well-researched and supported...Going Viral ambitiously goes deep into a network of factors contributing to a multimedia genre."

"Going Viral is an incisive and expertly-informed exploration of the anxieties that drive contemporary America; the fears of contagion that shape our public discourse, movie narratives and government policy.  Drawing with authority on both medical data and media theory, Schweitzer impressively tracks these concerns across recent history, tracing the dynamic between the diseased human body and the body politic, and examining key varieties of viral threat—from zombie plagues to terrorist cells—across fact, fiction and the porous borders between them. At a time when fears of cultural infection are used to justify the tightening of borders, the infringement of civil liberties and the building of walls, Going Viral is a vital guide to the politics of contamination and protection."

"A highly infectious read. Schweitzer's thought-provoking and meticulously researched account clearly outlines the relationship between the reality of viral threats and the Hollywood dramatization of the 'outbreak narrative.'" 

"Schweitzer puts together a very thoughtful and thought provoking look at the cross section between our world and the worst case scenarios we keep imagining." 

"Going Viral contextualizes contemporary outbreak narratives in rich detail. Schweitzer's attention to context sets this work apart from others on the subject and does so in an utterly approachable way."

"Going Viral deserves attention as the first major booklength study of the outbreak narrative, a cultural form that has been afforded a surprisingly limited amount of scholarly study given its extremely prolific nature. Cinema has been imagining how infectious disease might wipe out the human race since at least the mid-1960s, so this is clearly a cultural form that is deserving of academic attention."

"Schweitzer’s use of well-known examples of outbreak narratives, presented with ample background and context, offer entertaining avenues for her audience to engage with....Thorough scholarship."