The figure of the zombie that entered the popular imagination with the publication of William Seabrook's The Magic Island (1929)--during the American occupation of Haiti--still holds cultural currency around the world. This book calls for a rethinking of zombies in a sociopolitical context through the examination of several films, including White Zombie (1932), The Love Wanga (1935), I Walked with a Zombie (1943) and The Serpent and the Rainbow (1988). A 21st-century film from Haiti, Zombi candidat a la presidence ... ou les amours d'un zombi, is also examined. A reading of Heading South (2005), a film about the female tourist industry in the Caribbean, explores zombification as a consumptive process driven by capitalism.

The figure of the zombie that entered the popular imagination with the publication of William Seabrook's The Magic Island (1929)--during the American occupation of Haiti--still holds cultural currency around the world. This book calls for a rethinking of zombies in a sociopolitical context through the examination of several films, including White Zombie (1932), The Love Wanga (1935), I Walked with a Zombie (1943) and The Serpent and the Rainbow (1988). A 21st-century film from Haiti, Zombi candidat a la presidence ... ou les amours d'un zombi, is also examined. A reading of Heading South (2005), a film about the female tourist industry in the Caribbean, explores zombification as a consumptive process driven by capitalism.

Themes of faith and religion have been threaded through popular representations of the zombie so often that they now seem inextricably linked. Whether as mindless servants to a Vodou Bokor or as evidence of the impending apocalypse, the ravenous undead have long captured something of society's relationships with spirituality, religion and belief. By the start of the 21st century, religious beliefs are as varied as the many manifestations of the zombie itself, and both themes intersect with various ideological, environmental and even post-human concerns.This book surveys the various modern religious associations in zombie media. Some characters believe that the undead are part of God's plan, others theorize that the environment might be saving itself or that zombies might be predicting life and hybridity beyond human existence. Timely and important, this work is a meditation on how faith might not just be a forerunner to the apocalypse, but the catalyst to new kinds of life beyond it.

Believed to have emerged in the French Caribbean based on African spirit beliefs, the zombie represents not merely the walking dead, but also a walking embodiment of the region’s history and culture. In Haiti today, the zombie serves as an enduring memory of enslavement: it is defined as a reanimated body robbed of part of its soul, forced to work in sugarcane fields. In Martinique and Guadeloupe, the zombie takes the form of a shape-shifting evil spirit, and represents the dangers posed to the maroon or “freedom runner.” The Zombie in Contemporary French Caribbean Fiction is the first book-length study of the literary zombie in recent fiction from the region. It examines how this symbol of the enslaved (and of the evil spirits that threaten them) is used to represent and critique new socio-political situations in the Caribbean. It also offers a comprehensive and focused examination of the ways contemporary authors from Haiti and the French Antilles contribute to the global zombie imaginary, identifying four “avatars” of the zombie—the slave, the trauma victim, the horde, and the popular zombie—that appear frequently in fiction and anthropology, exploring how works by celebrated and popular authors reimagine these archetypes.

Looking beyond Euro-Anglo-US centric zombie narratives, Decolonizing the Undead reconsiders representations and allegories constructed around this figure of the undead, probing its cultural and historical weight across different nations and its significance to postcolonial, decolonial, and neoliberal discourses. Taking stock of zombies as they appear in literature, film, and television from the Caribbean, Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa, India, Japan, and Iraq, this book explores how the undead reflect a plethora of experiences previously obscured by western preoccupations and anxieties. These include embodiment and dismemberment in Haitian revolutionary contexts; resistance and subversion to social realities in the Caribbean and Latin America; symbiosis of cultural, historical traditions with Western popular culture; the undead as feminist figures; as an allegory for migrant workers; as a critique to reconfigure socio-ecological relations between humans and nature; and as a means of voicing the plurality of stories from destroyed cities and war-zones. Interspersed with contextual explorations of the zombie narrative in American culture (such as zombie walks and the television series The Santa Clarita Diet) contributors examine such writers as Lowell R. Torres, Diego Velázquez Betancourt, Hemendra Kumar Roy, and Manabendra Pal; works like China Mieville's Covehithe, Reza Negarestani's Cycolonopedia, Julio Ortega's novel Adiós, Ayacucho, Ahmed Saadawi's Frankenstein in Baghdad; and films by Alejandro Brugués, Michael James Rowland, Steve McQueen, and many others. Far from just another zombie project, this is a vital study that teases out the important conversations among numerous cultures and nations embodied in this universally recognized figure of the undead.

How international relations theory can be applied to a zombie invasion What would happen to international politics if the dead rose from the grave and started to eat the living? Daniel Drezner’s groundbreaking book answers the question that other international relations scholars have been too scared to ask. Addressing timely issues with analytical bite, Drezner looks at how well-known theories from international relations might be applied to a war with zombies. Exploring the plots of popular zombie films, songs, and books, Theories of International Politics and Zombies predicts realistic scenarios for the political stage in the face of a zombie threat and considers how valid—or how rotten—such scenarios might be. With worldwide calamity feeling ever closer, this new apocalyptic edition includes updates throughout as well as a new chapter on postcolonial perspectives.

Historically, zombies have been portrayed in films and television series as mindless, shuffling monsters. In recent years, this has changed dramatically. The undead are fast and ferocious in 28 Days Later... (2002) and World War Z (2013). In Warm Bodies (2013) and In the Flesh (2013-2015), they are thoughtful, sensitive and capable of empathy. These sometimes radically different depictions of the undead (and the still living) suggest critical inquiries: What does it mean to be human? What makes a monster? Who survives the zombie apocalypse, and why? Focusing on classic and current movies and TV shows, the author reveals how the once-subversive modern zombie, now more popular than ever, has been co-opted by the mainstream culture industry.

Challenging the human understanding of life and death, the zombie figure represents a fragmentation of personhood. From its earliest appearances in literature, the zombie characterized a human being that was no longer an indivisible whole, embodying the ontological debate over which elements of personhood are most uniquely human. Through its literary evolution, the zombie's missing element gradually approached a finer definition, as narratives moved beyond highlighting metaphysically opaque concepts like "soul" or "will." Studying over a century of American literary history, this book explores how zombies translate cultural concepts and definitions of personhood. Chapters detail how literary zombies have long presented narratives of American cultural self-examination.

Parenting is difficult under the best of circumstances--but extremely daunting when humanity faces cataclysmic annihilation. When the dead rise, hardship, violence and the ever-present threat of flesh-eating zombies will adversely affect parents and children alike. Depending on their age, children will have little chance of surviving a single encounter with the undead, let alone the unending peril of the Zombie Apocalypse. The key to their survival--and thus the survival of the species--will be the caregiving they receive. Drawing on psychological theory and real-world research on developmental status, grief, trauma, mental illness, and child-rearing in stressful environments, this book critically examines factors influencing parenting, and the likely outcomes of different caregiving techniques in the hypothetical landscape of the living dead.

The zombie--popular culture's undead darling--shows no signs of stopping. But as it develops to suit changing audience tastes, its characteristics transform. This collection of new essays examines the latest incarnation, the romantic zombie, a re-humanized monster we want to help, heal and connect with rather than destroy. The authors discuss our increasingly sympathetic view of the reanimated dead as more than physical bodies devoid of life and personality. Their essays cover a range of topics, including audience obsession with Apocalyptic love; the problem of a kinder, gentler undead; the millennial reinvention of the "sexy zombie"; and "uncanny valley romance."