ENG 3310 - Fall 2026 - Sanchez

With the global, lived experience of the COVID-19 pandemic not far behind this contemporary moment, memories of plague linger in collective thought and on-screen. Through a series of films spanning several genres – including science/speculative fiction, comedy, fantasy, horror, and the musical – this course examines how conceptions of mass infection are drawn and remembered through collective consciousness and cultural memory. We will analyze and reassess what these depictions of contagion (be they physically, socially, or culturally determined) suggest about the nature of infection as a socially transformative process.

Along with these screenings, students will engage with a variety of critical and theoretical texts from selected literature, popular culture, film studies, disability studies, and feminist and queer theory. This course discusses film as a means of exploring the problems of genre studies: relationship to literary genres, historical continuity, transformation of genre in the film medium. Students will consider how differences in not only genre but artistic medium (such as animation vs. live action, etc.) shift and redefine rigid definitions. What does it mean to contextualize experiences, such as “loneliness,” in the language of an epidemic? How does a speculative disease, such as a zombie virus, translate into the memory of “real-world” infection? How does the communicable bite of the vampire recall cultural appropriation? Through discussion, students will interrogate themes of plague, infection, mass hysteria, and transformation in film – both within the body, or in the very air around it.