Epidemic Cinema The Rise of a Genre

"When it comes to defining the genre of epidemic cinema Echeverria's book is certainly one of the best, if not the best, in laying out the conventions of the iconography of a genre that has finally received its proper attention in cinema studies. Its delineation of the genre's epidemiological characteristics of connectivity, containment, and conversion is superb. A must-read for anyone interested in how cinema reflects and shapes our understanding of global crises, collective vulnerability, and the cultural logics of contagion."

-- Tom Zaniello, Northern Kentucky University, USA

"Epidemic Cinema: The Rise of a Genre is absolutely timely, yet its author, Julia Echeverria, had already identified the centrality of the epidemic narrative long before the COVID-19 pandemic. Echeverria makes the bold claim that the epidemic narrative has evolved into a full-feldged film genre, with affinities to horror, science fiction but also melodrama and the action movie. Her book sets out to delineate the genre's contours, its history and its function as reflecting contemporary anxieties. More specifically, Echeverria pays special interest to the epidemic as a fundamentally transnational issue in a globalized context and, thus, as a prism through which to investigate the potentials and limitations of cosmopolitanism. Illuminating both obvious and less obvious case studies through rigorous formal analysis, Epidemic Cinema is without doubt an indispensable contribution to the fields of horror, science fiction and transnational studies and essential reading to anyone with an interest in the representation of disease on screen."

-- David Roche, Université Paul Valéry, France