Zombie Theses

A good one from the article abstract--

Zombies remind us that we will soon be decomposing flesh; the zombie horde embodies fear of loss of self and individuality; zombies expose the dark side of mass consumer culture; and zombies highlight the fragility of human identity in an advanced, globalised society.

Here's another from blogger Kevin Wong (The Artifice)--

If Millennials fear the encroaching societal changes brought by economic collapse, terrorist attacks, and climate change, then zombie fiction becomes the perfect outlet for society to explore and confront those fears, making peace with that disempowering feeling of inevitable doom inherent to the genre. Modern depictions of society’s response vary greatly. From World War Z’s bumbling, but ultimately victorious fight to The Walking Dead’s fragmented and divided inability to fight, and The Last of Us’ suffocating overprotectiveness, the archetypical zombie narrative is ultimately one about change, both in the world around us and within us.

Here's one on World War Z and Zone One (a decent zombie novel we aren't reading but that's worth a look)--obviously this one is for a longer article:

By considering how Max Brooks’ World War Z and Colson Whitehead’s Zone One participate in critical conversations regarding postmodernity, this paper reveals that these authors use the zombie apocalypse narrative to express concerns about social and cultural pathologies, as well as possibilities for utopian reform in the twenty-first century. By imagining the zombie horde as the radical other, the novels engage in discussions regarding racial and class inequalities in contemporary America. Ultimately, my analysis of these two texts reveals a disturbing tendency to imagine the zombie apocalypse as the solution to America’s persistent social and political dilemmas.


These below are free to use as you like, though the midterm doesn't require a global thesis statement--

The zombie narrative plays out anxieties and ambivalences about 21^st century biopower—an unsettling sense that governments, corporations, medicine and bioscience claim to act in favor of life but at the same time are a danger to it. 

The zombie narrative registers ambivalent social attitudes toward war and the traumas of war in post-9/11 America.

The zombie narrative projects a carnivalesque satire of American late-capitalist consumer society.

The zombie narrative pursues a meditation on issues of race in contemporary American society, projecting in dramatic form a range of attitudes from racist phobias to progressive inclusiveness and valuing of diversity.

The zombie narrative betrays deep ambivalences about the normative family in American society, sometimes privileging the nuclear family as last refuge in an apocalyptic world, sometimes representing the family as a space of patriarchal confinement and pathological power relationships. 

More to come--add yours in Comments if you like--let's kick em around! Good practice.