University of Baltimore to offer English class on zombies

By Daniel de Vise
Friday, September 10, 2010

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 leading 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 grotesquely revivified -- in a new course at the University of Baltimore called "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 a semester to study of the reawakened dead. His course, and recent offerings at Columbia College, Rice University and Georgia Tech, share a common interest in the zombie movie as an expression of the zeitgeist. the rest