American Zombie Gothic: The Rise and Fall (and Rise) of the Walking Dead in Popular Culture

Zombie stories are peculiarly American, as the creature was born in the New World and functions as a reminder of the atrocities of colonialism and slavery. The voodoo-based zombie films of the 1930s and '40s reveal deep-seated racist attitudes and imperialist paranoia, but the contagious, cannibalistic zombie horde invasion narrative established by George A. Romero has even greater singularity. This book provides a cultural and critical analysis of the cinematic zombie tradition, starting with its origins in Haitian folklore and tracking the development of the subgenre into the twenty-first century. Closely examining such influential works as Victor Halperin's White Zombie, Jacques Tourneur's I Walked with a Zombie, Lucio Fulci's Zombi 2, Dan O'Bannon's The Return of the Living Dead, Danny Boyle's 28 Days Later, and, of course, Romero's entire Dead series, it establishes the place of zombies in the Gothic tradition. Instructors considering this book for use in a course may request an examination copy here.

Author: Kyle William Bishop
Publisher: McFarland & Company
Published: 01/26/2010
Pages: 247
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.75lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.80d
ISBN: 9780786448067

About the Author
Kyle William Bishop is an associate professor of English and film studies and serves as the Honors Program Director at Southern Utah University in Cedar City, Utah. He has presented and published on a number of zombie-related texts and has authored two other monographs with McFarland.