One popular academic theory is that the current surge in zombies is an emanation of the nation’s fear of illegal immigrants. Scary, gross, and sometimes very funny, zombies manage to infect multiple genres (horror, romance, western, comedy) and national boundaries, while addressing modern societal concerns with conformity, crowds, colonialism, contagion, biotechnology and terrorism through the mirror of popular media and culture –”Īs with any scholarly discussion, the debates quickly become complicated, but I can offer a short guide for those just venturing into this literature. “…interrogating the zombie, which illustrates racial conflicts, sexual anxieties, and contemporary culture from a cross-cultural perspective. The major academic contributions to zombie studies have come, surprisingly, not from biology departments or schools of medicine, but from faculty members in “cultural studies” programs. See for example, Zombies, Culture and Critique. Here is a call for papers for a book on interdisciplinary studies of zombies. A pre-college course at Brown University, “Zombie! A Multi-Media Perspective” seeks to illuminate us by: Only a few years ago, Max Brooks had a best-seller with his rapidly zombi-phobic book, The Zombie Survival Guide: Complete Protection from the Living Dead (2003). Brooks took advantage of a loophole in state and federal law which permits people to “kill” zombies without fear of murder charges, since the victims are already technically dead. This irrational fear of zombies was recently dramatized by a hacker who altered a digital road sign in Austin warn drivers, “zombies ahead.” Zombies are still not socially acceptable in some parts of the country. The Times also reports a movie in the works titled Pride and Predator, in which the Bennet family has to face down the scalp-hunting alien from “the 1987 cult classic” starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. Should we embrace this new spirit of inclusiveness? According to the Times, the classic text is “juiced up with ‘all-new scenes of bone-crunching zombie mayhem.’” This sounds well and good, but we admit some trepidation over changing the actual texts of canonical books to make them more appealing to identity groups. NAS, however, recognizes that there is increasing public controversy about the role of zombies in our society and we are weighing whether to become more actively involved with the issue. For example, the New York Times reported this Sunday in the “Ideas and Trends” section that a new edition of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice is being issued by Quirk Books in San Francisco, titled Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. The National Association of Scholars has no official position on zombies. That doesn’t mean we lack opinions on the walking dead. Our members hold a variety of views on questions such as whether zombies should qualify for student financial aid, whether colleges should respect a student’s desire not to have a zombie roommate, and whether it is good academic policy to have courses taught by adjunct zombies.
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