Pandemics in American Popular Culture: Depicting Disease and Confronting Contagion

From Cold War-era fears of biological warfare to zombie plagues as metaphors for contagion to portrayals of recent experiences with Covid-19, pandemics have featured prominently in American popular culture for decades.

Discover more than 90 books, movies, television shows, video games, and other forms of media that focus on historical or fictional disease outbreaks and their devastating results. Readers will find fan-favorites such as The Stand, 28 Days Later, The Last of Us, and Plague Inc., as well as many others. Each entry begins with a concise plot summary before delving deeper into the work’s key thematic elements and cultural impact. Across a diverse spectrum of media and varied representations of contagion, readers will also better understand the common thematic threads - human fragility and resilience, social responsibility and the search for a cure - connecting these portrayals.

James Craig Holte is Emeritus Professor of English and Film Studies at East Carolina University, USA.