Course description

[randy_byers]

Zombies and Indians
Instructor: [redacted]

While zombies have existed at some level of reality for centuries, it was not until the 20th Century that zombies overran the global popular imagination. Because of their origins at the many points of collision between colonizer and colonized, zombies have always walked the uncertain spaces between binary

Comments

[kproche]

Gee, did the instructor ever see this film?
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0795505/

[randy_byers]

Maybe it's on the syllabus!

[kim_huett]

I've devoted some time over the last couple of years to reading and thinking about vampires. Something I've noticed is that in the medieval stories of Europe vampires, zombies, and other such creatures aren't very clearly delineated. There seems to be a lot of crossover in regards to many details of the differing legend, so much so that what the creature is called various specific tales seems more or less arbitrary. Separating out the legends and giving each a specific set of attributes seems to have been something that started in 19th century fiction. I wonder if this happened as a response to a great European awareness of non-European cultures?

[randy_byers]

The speciation of supernatural creatures? Perhaps it's a byproduct of the scientifiction revolution.

[kim_huett]

You know, that would be a very good point if you replaced scientifiction with scientific. Given the classification of the natural world became popular during the 18th/19th centuries it's possible this influenced people like Bram Stoker and caused them to be more fastidious about what their creations could and could not do. I shall have to give this more thought.