Though Halloweek may be over, costumes put away and candy eaten, the thrill of monsters will never die.
The vampire has recently dominated popular culture with monster hits like "Twilight," "True Blood" and "The Vampire Diaries." And the zombie dawn is rising.
The zombie's popularity has surged most visibly in the entertainment world, with movies and shows like "Shaun of the Dead," "Zombieland" and "The Walking Dead." But recent courses, colloquiums and events on campus prove that the zombie's popularity has also taken an academic spin.
"Raising the Undead: The Image of the Zombie in Transnational Popular Culture," a colloquium series created by Brent Fujioka GS and Amy Johnson GS, held its first lecture Nov. 6 and will continue over the course of the academic year.
Thursday's lecture, titled "Walking Dead U: How the Zombie Renaissance Makes Zombie Studies Possible," was given by Kyle William Bishop, assistant professor of English at Southern Utah University and author of "American Zombie Gothic: The Rise and Fall (And Rise) of the Walking Dead in Popular Culture."
Bishop attributed the "Zombie Renaissance" of the past 10 years to a resurgence in paranoia and fear in the American public following Sept. 11, 2001. When major national trauma occurs, the American people have commonly sought out art to exercise their feelings, he said.
Bishop delivered his lecture with a balance of humor, pop culture and academia. He started with clips and images from films and TV shows, including "28 Days Later," "Dawn of the Dead" and "Land of the Dead." He then discussed the zombie's academic significance.
The zombie is an "allegorical figure that can be deployed to understand the world around us," he said.
Clifton Yeo '14, who attended Bishop's lecture, admitted that his attendance stemmed from a childhood love of zombie movies, though he left with a more intellectual appreciation for the walking dead.
Chelsea Cormier McSwiggin GS said she came for a number of reasons — her opinion that zombies could be a "legitimate area of anthropological study" and her fascination with horror movies.
Bishop's academic inquiry into zombies is certainly not an isolated incident. This spring, Fujioka, the leading creator of the colloquium series, will teach AMCV 0190E: "It's The End of the World As We Know It: Zombie and Apocalypse Narratives in American Pop Culture." The class is capped at 17 students, but Fujioka received over 35 email requests to join from first-years and sophomores who had been shut out.
Bishop's book will be the cornerstone of the class, since Fujioka considers him to be one of the leading zombie scholars. Fujioka said he intends to cover zombies in both historical and contemporary perspectives in the class. While Fujioka is fascinated by the academic side of the zombie, he also focuses on the entertainment side of the monster as well, especially within the realm of comic books and graphic novels.
The zombie is a monster "both shaping and reflecting American culture," said Johnson, who took on a supportive role in the colloquium series. She hopes to gather a mix of lecturers that reflect the academic side of zombies as well as their place in pop culture.
No future speakers are set in stone, but Fujioka said he is discussing with a variety of academics and members of the entertainment industry.
A modern horror zombie is an "ambulatory corpse that reproduces through infection," Bishop said. So why is the zombie such an alluring figure?
The fascination stems from the relation between the zombie and the human, said David Bering-Porter, adjunct assistant professor of modern culture and media, who recently finished his dissertation on "undeadness" and the zombie. As opposed to the "aristocratic vampire" and "the otherness" of the alien, zombies are "simply us at our worst," he said. "Zombies are the proletarian monster."
But the zombie lives on College Hill in fun ways as well.
Bering-Porter helped organize a Providence Zombie Film Festival in 2008, and for five years now, RISD students have transformed themselves into zombies with makeup and fake blood on Z-Day, moaning and groaning their way up Thayer Street.
The event is common nationwide, Bishop said, citing examples of other zombie-inspired events, including an ad for a zombie lap dance night at a strip club.
"Fan culture has come to reflect the narrative itself — the zombie has infected us all," Bishop said.
