The College Fix

If the zombie class includes a primer in cricket bat combat, count me in. (Photo: Universal Studios)

Via the WaPO:

Is “Night of the Living Dead” a simple zombie film or a subtle antiwar statement? Precisely when did viral pandemic supplant nuclear radiation as the lead cause of zombification? And which sort of animated dead has the greater potential to frighten: shambler or sprinter?

Those questions and others will be laid to rest — and then gruesomely revivified — in a new 300-level course at the University of Baltimore titled “Media Genres: Zombies.”

Arnold Blumberg, a lifelong enthusiast of popular culture in general and zombie films in particular, is among the first university professors to devote an entire semester to study of the reawakened dead. His course, and recent offerings at Columbia College and Georgia Tech, share a common interest in the zombie movie as expression of zeitgeist.

[…] “Right now we’re in a massive surge of zombie entertainment,” said Blumberg, whose University of Baltimore course is numbered English 333, a sum that is — numerologists, take note — exactly half of 666.

“On the most basic level, zombies are probably one of the most potent horror icons, one of the closest to us in terms of identification factor, in terms of reflecting ourselves,” he said. “The zombie is, simply, us.” [emphasis mine]

“THE ZOMBIE IS, SIMPLY, US.” On a different note, anyone know of any  studies regarding the attrition rate among students  reading “Pride and Prejudice” versus that of “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies”?

Vishal Ganesan is a student at the University of Arizona and blogs at the Desert Lamp.

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