12 Ways Zombies Are Invading Academia

Staff Writers — October 7, 2012

From Zombieland to World War Z to The Walking Dead to Pride and Prejudice with Zombies, the past several years have seen a proliferation of the zombie genre throughout all forms of popular culture … almost as though it were an epidemic … spreading through the population, contaminating all those who …


["UUUARRRGGHH" ... *BOOM* ... splat.]

Sorry about that, had to pull out the ol’ shotgun for a second there. As I was saying, for some reason it seems like these days zombies are everywhere (including a bizarre recent political ad). They’re even being spotted on college campuses. No, I’m not talking about the vacant, gum-smacking students staring at their iPhones in the back row, or the hollow-eyed professors who’ve graded one too many stacks of essays and fallen into a catatonic depression that even coffee can no longer shake them from. Rather, I’m referring to the actual subject matter being taught. More and more classes seem to be rising from the crypts of academic departments, across America and beyond, to infect the unsuspecting student body with an interest in all things zombie-related. I guess it should come as no surprise. Think about it: what better place to look than the ivory tower to satisfy your hunger for BRAAAAIIINS …

And on that note, here are a dozen syllabi that would raise even the most sluggish, stumbling student from the dead:

  1. Zombie Survival Training at Michigan State University’s School of Social Work

    In this course, listed at MSU as SW290: “Surviving the Coming Zombie Apocalypse: Catastrophes & Human Behavior,” students divide into groups for the semester to game out the aftermath of a “Catastrophic Event Simulation” in which extreme solar flares cause a zombie pandemic. While it sounds fun, the real purpose is to stimulate thinking about responses to more realistic human situations, such as natural disasters.

  2. Zombiemania Writer at University of Baltimore’s School of Communications Design

    As part of its available minor in pop culture, UB offered a class with Arnold T. Blumberg, curator of local treasure trove Geppi’s Entertainment Museum and author of Zombiemania: 80 Movies to Die For. The class analyzes the meaning and appeal of zombie narratives and the societal anxieties they reveal.

  3. “Zombies in Popular Media” at Columbia College of Chicago

    The syllabus for this intensive (January “J-session” followed by spring semester) examination of the zombie phenomenon lists the following course objectives: “Understand the zombie figure as it has appeared in literary, filmic, and comic texts (among others), from early
    incarnations in the first half of the 20th century to more recent revisionist texts,” followed by “Improve comprehension and application of critical theory as it pertains to horror texts (such as hermeneutics, postmodern theory, media studies, and critical lenses such as feminism or psychoanalysis),” and finally, “Explore how the zombie figure relates, symbolically and critically, to modern culture. Depending on the texts explored, such themes might include capitalism, individuality, the information age, and xenophobia.”

  4. Nick Proctor’s History of the Great Zombie War book project at Simpson College

    History professor Nick Proctor is devoted to an innovative pedagogical approach: reenacting past events, or in this case fictional events. His zombie apocalypse role-playing class collaborated to produce an entire book A History of the Great Zombie War: The Simpson Experience, supposedly commissioned by “the documentation program managed by the Department of Recovery” following the Great Zombie War that ravaged the Midwest, including Simpson’s campus in Indianola, Iowa. The hyper-intensive three-week project must have been a crazy binge of experiential learning; not only did students plan out this fictional history, but they actually made and marketed the book, with the help of a Kickstarter fundraising drive.

  5. Student-Run Zombie Course at UC Berkeley

    This course is offered under the auspices of DeCal, the experimental student-run “democratic education” program founded in 1965 at the height of the Free Speech Movement at the University of California, Berkeley. It’s called, wonderfully, “You Are Who You Eat,” and though it counts as a Film Studies class, it’s also very reading-intensive, including some grounding in the real-life roots of the zombie myth via books by anthropologist Wade Davis.

  6. Freshman Seminar on “The Zombie Plague” at University of Georgia

    This class is taught by Dr. John J. Maurer from the College of Veterinary Medicine as part of the First Year Odyssey program of small, intellectually stimulating seminars that serve as an introduction to collegiate-level thinking. The goal is to “tackle the infectious disease aspect of the zombie transformation and discuss parallel diseases, principles behind infectious diseases, and real pandemic plagues. Mostly, we’ll use ‘zombies’ as the basis for fun discussions of infectious diseases, infectious agents, and other related topics (e.g., biowarfare).”

  7. Zombie Preparation and Research Society at University of Nebraska—Lincoln

    This one’s not a course but a school-sanctioned club. Its objectives? “(1) To facilitate and guide thought experiments surrounding a hypothetical zombie apocalypse by incorporating members’ personal experiences, opinions and thoughts with special regard to the inclusion of each member’s area of ‘expertise’ and/or UNL majors. This will be done through research projects, papers, guest speakers and discussions compiled into an annual literary report. (2) To teach, develop and rehearse survival skills, techniques and planning strategies that would increase members’ survivability in the event of a zombie apocalypse. (3) To foster a fun and friendly way for students to get involved on campus that allows them a creative outlet and application of what they are learning in their classes as well as providing social activities.”

  8. “Zombiism” Public Health Simulation at University of Rhode Island

    This clinical war-game exercise, takes its cue, as do a couple of the courses listed here, from the Center for Disease Control’s half-serious Zombie Preparedness initiative, which brilliantly used a funny PR-happy hook to package real message about preparedness for epidemics. By simulating a zombie outbreak where “25 pharmacy students will be running a mock dispensing clinic, during which anti-viral medications mockingly named Zombivir and Gummivir (really just Sour Patch and Gummy Bears candies) will be given to individuals to prevent the disease’s spread,” URI similarly hopes to give some real lessons in dealing with bioterrorism, pandemics and natural disasters.

  9. Not One, But Two Zombie Classes at Texas Tech

    That’s right…they’re multiplying! One is an Honors College seminar called “Zombie Culture: The Zombie in History, Film, Literature, Sequential Art and the Popular Imagination.” [Sequential art = comic books, by the way, for those of you zombies who've been living (or not) under a rock.] The other is a Special Topics in Rhetoric class in the Department of Communication Studies about post-apocalyptic discourses, including not only zombies but things like nuclear war and the Mayan 2012 phenomenon.

  10. Zombie Fiction Class at LSU

    English 2025 at LSU is a class called Zombie Fiction, which includes film screenings as well as readings that trace the cultural roots of the genre, including not only strict zombie stories but precursors by masters of horror like Edgar Allan Poe and H.P. Lovecraft.

  11. “Special Topics: Zombies” at the University of Western Ontario

    A strictly cinema-focused offering of the Department of Film Studies, this course (which is also offered online) aims to “examine such influences on the genre as German Expressionism and psychoanalytic theories, and explore the idea that such films reflect the cultural anxieties of their respective times and places in relation to such issues as gender, sexuality, race, youth, the hegemony, capitalism, technology, religion, and the environment.”

  12. The Zombie Institute for Theoretical Studies (ZITS) at the University of Glasgow

    ZITS, sponsored by health charity the Wellcome Trust as well as the University of Glasgow, is “dedicated to the scientific study of Zombieism” and puts on a touring lecture for UK high school students entitled “Zombie Science 1Z.” Oh dear God, it’s spreading to the youth … we’ve got to stop this! Who will think of the children? Operator, put me on the phone to Scotland Yard, I’ve discovered an imminent threat to … hold on a moment. Did you hear that?

    [Sound of feet dragging ... door handle jiggles ... UUUARRRGGHH! End transmission.]