In the basement of Bolton Hall, if you listen closely, you can hear the faint sound of screams, the pop of gunshots, and the hisses and snarls of a hungry horde of rotting corpses shambling closer and closer\u2026<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not the zombie apocalypse. It\u2019s just Wednesday in comparative literature.<\/p>\n
Drago Momcilovic, a senior lecturer in 51ÁÔÆæ\u2019s comparative literature program, is in his second year of teaching CompLit 135, a variable-topics course. Momcilovic\u2019s is titled, \u201cZombie Metaphors.\u201d The class takes a deep look at zombies in popular culture and what our fascination with these monsters says about society.<\/p>\n
On the syllabus are cult classics and fan favorites, from old George Romero movies to AMC\u2019s \u201cThe Walking Dead.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cFolk tales are filled with monsters,\u201d Momcilovic said. \u201cThey get us to think about what a monster shows us and what a monster warns us about. Those are the two implicit functions of monstrosity, (and) the zombie is a really specific subset of monster that is very popular today.\u201d<\/p>\n
Though they\u2019ve changed from decade to decade, zombies are generally recognized as reanimated corpses on the hunt for food \u2013 usually human brains. Those bitten by zombies are doomed to become one. The concept has its origins in Caribbean and specifically Haitian culture; the monster grew out of beliefs surrounding witch doctors who could render a victim apparently dead and revive them as a personal slave.<\/p>\n
The zombie has evolved since then and seems to be today\u2019s monster of choice.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had vampires when I was growing up in the \u201890s,\u201d Momcilovic remembered. \u201cBut we ran the gamut of that, and zombies made an interesting comeback. You see these different iterations all around the world \u2013 Indonesia, the Balkans, even Argentina and Japan. They\u2019re importing different stories from Romero and American masters and authenticating them in their own cultural vernacular.\u201d<\/p>\n
What is driving society\u2019s obsession with zombies these days?<\/p>\n
\u201cThe rise of computers,\u201d he suggested. \u201cThe zombie virus and the computer virus are hand-in-hand in a lot of ways. They\u2019ve evolved together and they\u2019ve defamiliarized the way we interact with people. Zombies hoard together. They act as a collective, almost like a kind of network. So all of these buzzwords like \u2018network\u2019 and \u2018virus\u2019 link these two tropes of infection.\u201d<\/p>\n
Moreover, he added, today people fear a global pandemic. News about SARS and Ebola outbreaks mimic many of the ways fictional \u201czombie outbreaks\u201d occur as well.<\/p>\n
This is Momcilovic\u2019s second year of teaching this class. He breaks the course into three units. The first deals with the popular American canon of zombie works, starting with Romero\u2019s \u201cNight of the Living Dead\u201d and other movies, and moving onto \u201cThe Walking Dead\u201d and \u201cWorld War Z,\u201d a novel penned by author and actor Max Brooks, son of the comedian and director Mel Brooks.<\/p>\n
The second unit examines precursors to zombies \u2013 works like Mary Shelley\u2019s \u201cFrankenstein,\u201d for instance, or the 1932 film \u201cThe Mummy.\u201d The third discusses zombies across the globe and how other cultures\u2019 take on the monster echoes or differs from the American iteration, including the Japanese manga \u201cI Am a Hero\u201d by Kengo Hanazawa and the French television series \u201cLes Revenants (The Returned).\u201d<\/p>\n
Really, the class is a sneaky way to teach critical and literary analysis.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn some sense, I\u2019m looking for the students to practice and hone their critical analysis skills, but I also want them to go beyond the mirror aesthetic response, which is to either enjoy it or be horrified by it,\u201d Momcilovic said. \u201cI want them to actually think about this as a representation that\u2019s telling us something about ourselves, our culture, our society, and the many things we are very unresolved about.\u201d<\/p>\n
In one recent class period, Momcilovic opened discussion on \u201cWorld War Z.\u201d The novel plays like a documentary, piecing together an account of the events of a worldwide zombie outbreak. From a Russian soldier to a Japanese monk to an American politician, Max Brooks uses 43 narrative voices to outline various countries\u2019 and cultures\u2019 responses to fight the shambling horde.<\/p>\n
Momcilovic questioned his students: Why is the novel structured in such a way? How do zombies provide a vehicle to discuss real-life geopolitics? How does it speak to our fears about North Korea, China, and Russia? Are there parallels to the role of mass media in the book and in our society? What is the point of describing gore in graphic detail?<\/p>\n
\u201cBlood and guts are a huge part of the zombie myth. Zombies are supposed to be disgusting,\u201d he notes. \u201cThere is something about seeing blood and guts and gore that attracts, but also makes us want to look away. It\u2019s paradoxical. The zombie exposes us to that graphic display.\u201d<\/p>\n
There will be tests and paper as the semester progresses, and as a final project, Momcilovic will ask his students to make their own curated creative project featuring their own favorite zombie books, shows, movies and games.<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of these students are coming into the class having seen a whole bunch of other zombie movies that I\u2019ve never heard of,\u201d he said. \u201cZombie culture permeates all of these different spheres of life that these kids are interested in.\u201d<\/p>\n
The class has been well received.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe student response has been very enthusiastic, but they\u2019re also engaged,\u201d he said. \u201cI love that they talk back to me. It\u2019s a formal lecture, but they feel comfortable enough to share their opinions.\u201d<\/p>\n
They bring their own expertise to the classroom as well; one student identified the main character Rick\u2019s pistol in \u201cThe Walking Dead,\u201d and how the six-shooter fit within the show\u2019s greater context of societal evolution.<\/p>\n
They\u2019re also quick to grasp an overarching theme shared between dozens of zombie-related works: Humanity can often be as monstrous as the monsters they face, all in the name of survival.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s why Momcilovic\u2019s personal favorite zombie work is \u201cThe Walking Dead.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cTo me, the things that they do in that series are probably the most innovative and gripping, because it\u2019s not just about the zombies; it\u2019s about the survivors,\u201d he said. \u201cAs the series evolves, the other survivor communities become even bigger threats to the main characters than the zombies themselves. Suddenly the world becomes very unrecognizable, and it\u2019s not because of the walking dead.\u201d<\/p>\n
His students will discuss that and more as they spend the rest of the semester filling their braaaaains<\/em>\u2026.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Monster tales have been part of human cultures for centuries. But they aren\u2019t just scary stories \u2014 they tell us something about ourselves. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":785,"featured_media":76494,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","uwm_wg_additional_authors":[]},"categories":[174],"tags":[],"section":[127,128],"display_categories":[115,116],"related-coverage":[207],"uwmnews-feed":[158,159],"class_list":["post-76493","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","section-arts-humanities","section-humanities","display_categories-top-story-secondary","display_categories-top-story-section","related-coverage-teaching","uwmnews-feed-letters-science","uwmnews-feed-humanities"],"yoast_head":"\n