ZOMBIES ARE COMING TO A SCHOOL NEAR YOU!

Contributing author Alfredo Torres is an adjunct professor of communications at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, VA where he wrote his master’s thesis on the metaphoric representation of zombies in the films of George Romero.

Zombies are coming to a school near you!

Unlike the shambling corpses themselves, the zombie phenomenon shows no sign of slowing down as the hallowed halls of academia have increasingly broadened their course selection to include a zombie-based focus on subjects as varied as politics, mathematics, philosophy, communications and sociology. Members of the academic community are increasingly publishing peer reviewed articles which feature the undead as the central theme around which to focus their thoughts and theories.

Schools such as University of California at Berkley, University of Colorado at Boulder, Rice University and Michigan State University all offer zombie based courses as more and more students decide to use zombies as a way to present their academic ideas. Many of these students are seeking advanced degrees, choosing to use zombies as the cornerstone of their papers and successfully defending their Masters thesis and Doctoral dissertations in front of their academic boards.

You only have to look as far as our advisory board to see the number of members who belong to academia who are involved not only in the Zombie Research Society, but are also faculty at such esteemed and hallowed academic institutions as the University of California, San Francisco, the University of Iowa and Harvard Medical School. Of the eleven members of the advisory board, eight have PhDs. Some of their papers were featured in my own Master’s thesis.

If zombies are your passion, do not let shortsighted advisers who choose not to follow popular culture keep you from combining your academic interests with your love of the undead. Who knows? You might see your paper being referenced in someone else’s thesis, kinda like I did with ZRS advisory board member Daniel W. Drezner’s Theories of International Politics and Zombies.