3.0

credits

Average Course Rating

This course, designed for non- and potential majors, aims to develop invaluable critical reading and writing skills by way of a fascinating and fun topic: zombies. Some of the questions we will ask as we learn to interpret and analyze a range of media are: Why does the zombie figure so prominently in modern literature and film? What particular anxieties does this figure of mindless violence disclose? Why does the zombie genre so often lend itself to political allegory? How do we make historical sense of this figure's original association with Afro-Atlantic religions like Haitian voodoo? Texts may include: Mary Shelley, Frankenstein; William Seabrook, The Magic Island; Zora Neale Hurston, Tell My Horse; White Zombie, dir. Victor Halperin; I Walked With a Zombie, dir. Jacques Tourneur; the George Romero films; Shaun of the Dead, dir. Edgar Wright; Juan of the Dead, dir. Alejandro Brugués; Tony Burgess, Pontypool Changes Everything; Colson Whitehead, Zone One; iZombie, creators Rob Thomas and Diane Ruggiero-Wright.