[PDF] American Zombie eBook

Author : Kyle William Bishop
Publisher : McFarland
Page : 249 pages
File Size : 10,57 MB
Release : 2010-01-26
Category : Performing Arts
ISBN : 0786448067

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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
Page : 249 pages
File Size : 21,13 MB
Release : 2010-03-08
Category : Performing Arts
ISBN : 0786455543

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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 : T. May Stone
Publisher : McFarland
Page : 209 pages
File Size : 15,35 MB
Release : 2023-08-02
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 1476648263

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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.

Author : Christopher M. Moreman
Publisher : McFarland
Page : 230 pages
File Size : 29,56 MB
Release : 2011-10-10
Category : Performing Arts
ISBN : 0786488085

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On the surface, the zombie seems the polar opposite of the human--they are the living dead; we, in essence, are the dying alive. But the zombie is also "us." Although decaying, it looks like us, dresses like us, and sometimes (if rarely) acts like us. In this volume, essays by scholars from a range of disciplines examine the zombie as a thematic presence in literature, film, video games, legal language, and philosophy, exploring topics including zombies and the environment, litigation, the afterlife, capitalism, and the erotic. Through this wide-ranging examination of the zombie phenomenon, the authors seek to discover what the zombie can teach us about being human. Instructors considering this book for use in a course may request an examination copy here.

Author : Sarah J. Lauro
Publisher : Rutgers University Press
Page : 284 pages
File Size : 24,39 MB
Release : 2015-07-15
Category : Art
ISBN : 0813568854

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Our most modern monster and perhaps our most American, the zombie that is so prevalent in popular culture today has its roots in African soul capture mythologies. The Transatlantic Zombie provides a more complete history of the zombie than has ever been told, explaining how the myth’s migration to the New World was facilitated by the transatlantic slave trade, and reveals the real-world import of storytelling, reminding us of the power of myths and mythmaking, and the high stakes of appropriation and homage. Beginning with an account of a probable ancestor of the zombie found in the Kongolese and Angolan regions of seventeenth-century Africa and ending with a description of the way, in contemporary culture, new media are used to facilitate zombie-themed events, Sarah Juliet Lauro plots the zombie’s cultural significance through Caribbean literature, Haitian folklore, and American literature, film, and the visual arts. The zombie entered US consciousness through the American occupation of Haiti, the site of an eighteenth-century slave rebellion that became a war for independence, thus making the figuration of living death inseparable from its resonances with both slavery and rebellion. Lauro bridges African mythology and US mainstream culture by articulating the ethical complications of the zombie as a cultural conquest that was rebranded for the American cinema. As The Transatlantic Zombie shows, the zombie is not merely a bogeyman representing the ills of modern society, but a battleground over which a cultural war has been fought between the imperial urge to absorb exotic, threatening elements, and the originary, Afro-diasporic culture’s preservation through a strategy of mythic combat.

Author : John Quiggin
Publisher : Princeton University Press
Page : 288 pages
File Size : 17,24 MB
Release : 2012-05-06
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 0691154546

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In the graveyard of economic ideology, dead ideas still stalk the land. The recent financial crisis laid bare many of the assumptions behind market liberalism—the theory that market-based solutions are always best, regardless of the problem. For decades, their advocates dominated mainstream economics, and their influence created a system where an unthinking faith in markets led many to view speculative investments as fundamentally safe. The crisis seemed to have killed off these ideas, but they still live on in the minds of many—members of the public, commentators, politicians, economists, and even those charged with cleaning up the mess. In Zombie Economics, John Quiggin explains how these dead ideas still walk among us—and why we must find a way to kill them once and for all if we are to avoid an even bigger financial crisis in the future. Zombie Economics takes the reader through the origins, consequences, and implosion of a system of ideas whose time has come and gone. These beliefs—that deregulation had conquered the financial cycle, that markets were always the best judge of value, that policies designed to benefit the rich made everyone better off—brought us to the brink of disaster once before, and their persistent hold on many threatens to do so again. Because these ideas will never die unless there is an alternative, Zombie Economics also looks ahead at what could replace market liberalism, arguing that a simple return to traditional Keynesian economics and the politics of the welfare state will not be enough—either to kill dead ideas, or prevent future crises. In a new chapter, Quiggin brings the book up to date with a discussion of the re-emergence of pre-Keynesian ideas about austerity and balanced budgets as a response to recession.

Author : Jamie Russell
Publisher : National Geographic Books
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 46,4 MB
Release : 2014-10-14
Category : Performing Arts
ISBN : 178116925X

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The zombie is cinema’s most enduring horror icon, having terrified audiences for decades. Book of the Dead charts the history of the walking dead from the monster’s origins in Haitian voodoo, through its cinematic debut in 1932’s White Zombie up to blockbuster World War Z and beyond. Covering hundreds of movies from America, Europe, Asia and even the Middle East, Jamie Russell examines zombies’ on-screen evolution from Caribbean bogeymen to flesh-eating corpses and apocalyptic plague carriers. With an exhaustive filmography covering the history of the zombie genre, Book of the Dead explains our ongoing fascination with the living dead and how this shambolic monster has become a stumbling, moaning metaphor for our age. Fully revised and updated with over 300 new movies Includes an exclusive interview with the ‘Don of the Dead’ George A. Romero The ultimate resource for zombie fans everywhere

Author : John Vervaeke
Publisher : Open Book Publishers
Page : 96 pages
File Size : 34,58 MB
Release : 2017-06-15
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 178374331X

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Why has the zombie become such a pervasive figure in twenty-first-century popular culture? John Vervaeke, Christopher Mastropietro and Filip Miscevic seek to answer this question by arguing that particular aspects of the zombie, common to a variety of media forms, reflect a crisis in modern Western culture. The authors examine the essential features of the zombie, including mindlessness, ugliness and homelessness, and argue that these reflect the outlook of the contemporary West and its attendant zeitgeists of anxiety, alienation, disconnection and disenfranchisement. They trace the relationship between zombies and the theme of secular apocalypse, demonstrating that the zombie draws its power from being a perversion of the Christian mythos of death and resurrection. Symbolic of a lost Christian worldview, the zombie represents a world that can no longer explain itself, nor provide us with instructions for how to live within it. The concept of 'domicide' or the destruction of home is developed to describe the modern crisis of meaning that the zombie both represents and reflects. This is illustrated using case studies including the relocation of the Anishinaabe of the Grassy Narrows First Nation, and the upheaval of population displacement in the Hellenistic period. Finally, the authors invoke and reformulate symbols of the four horseman of the apocalypse as rhetorical analogues to frame those aspects of contemporary collapse that elucidate the horror of the zombie. Zombies in Western Culture: A Twenty-First Century Crisis is required reading for anyone interested in the phenomenon of zombies in contemporary culture. It will also be of interest to an interdisciplinary audience including students and scholars of culture studies, semiotics, philosophy, religious studies, eschatology, anthropology, Jungian studies, and sociology.

Author : William Seabrook
Publisher : Courier Dover Publications
Page : 433 pages
File Size : 25,20 MB
Release : 2016-04-21
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 048679962X

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This 1929 volume offers firsthand accounts of Haitian voodoo and witchcraft rituals. Author William Seabrook introduced the concept of the walking dead to the West with this illustrated travelogue.

Author : Kate Mikoley
Publisher : Enslow Publishing, LLC
Page : 48 pages
File Size : 35,95 MB
Release : 2019-12-15
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
ISBN : 1978513704

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For years, zombies have been a staple in horror movies. More recently, they've become a popular topic in many television shows as well. Throughout American history, people have told tales of those who have died but not quite left their bodies behind. The undead come in many forms depending on the specific legend. Through engaging text, accompanied by captivatingly creepy images and informative sidebars, readers will learn how the stories told about zombies have changed over the years, along with people's beliefs about them. This intriguing volume is a must-have for those interested in the paranormal.