Smarty Pants From The American Scholar

For decades, artists have been using horror to speak to our deepest societal fears, from the wilderness (werewolves) to the unknown (aliens). With zombies, that fear is infection: the outbreak of some terrible epidemic that sweeps the world, rendering us all into the drooling, flesh-eating monster next door. But as Dahlia Schweitzer shows in her new book, Going Viral, zombies are part of a much older lineage—dating back to Haitian slavery. Recently, these stories have arisen as commentary on the Ebola and AIDS epidemics, as well as terrorism, and in many cases, fact and fiction seem unfortunately to blur. Why have these outbreak narratives infected the public conversation? And how have they affected the way we see the world?Episode page: https://theamericanscholar.org/zombies-oh-my/Go beyond the episode:Dahlia Schweitzer’s Going Viral: Zombies, Viruses, and the End of the WorldCheck out this chart of the three film cycles of outbreak narrativesWant to be comforted after all that terror? Here’s