ENG 3310 Spring 2022 Curran

This course is intended as an introduction to the zombie genre of films. The zombie film has been enjoying unprecedented popularity in the past decade or more, but this horror subgenre has a much longer history. We will explore why the zombie is relevant today and what we learn about humanity through the films. The world of the living dead holds up a mirror to our own and reveals much about the cultural anxieties of a society in any given historical moment.

While there are earlier zombie films such as White Zombie (1932), we will focus on films starting with director George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead (1968). While zombies can be a bleak subject matter, many of the films we will watch are somewhat comical in nature. There will be a lot of reading, writing, film viewing, and discussion in this course.

The subject leads us through difficult terrain (topics like death, corpses, embalming, rotting flesh, cannibalism, etc.), and we will have to sludge through some gore along the way. If you’re squeamish, you may have to cover your eyes at certain moments, but we’re in this together, so talking about what, how, and why we recoil will be one of the subjects of this class.

This course meets the Genre requirement for LMC majors.