I'm kicking around a class about zombies. Perhaps a J-term for 2007 or a proposed special-topics course. Here begins the list of things I might use.

• Films: Dawn of the Dead (both), Shaun of the Dead, Night of the Living Dead, 28 Days Later, The Serpent and the Rainbow, Carnival of Souls, The Hills Have Eyes, Dead Alive, Evil Dead, The Beyond, Resident Evil
• Films I haven't seen yet: House of 1000 Corpses, Resident Evil Apocalypse, Cemetary Man
• Comics: E.C. comics from the 50s, Dawn of the Dead (Niles' adaptation), Lenore
• Games: Resident Evil series, Stubbs the Zombie, Zombies!!! (the boardgame)
• Books: The Serpent and the Rainbow, The Zombie Survival Guide

The big question is whether this would be a traditional cultural studies class, or whether I can find a heuretic method to engage with Zombies. On one hand, the appeal of teaching a cultural studies class that approaches Zombie texts from a variety of theoretical positions appeals to me. On the other, I find experimental classes most interesting and challenging. So, perhaps I can learn from Writing About Cool—look at many different aspects of zombie-ness to see what we can learn about writing about zombies. Another approach: zombies emerge as primary figures in horror with Night of the Living Dead; perhaps 1968 is the answer to the question of why zombies?

It has been a pet theory of mine that the emergence of "fast zombies" in 28 Days Later and Dawn of the Dead signifies a cultural response to the speed of the digital age. If Night of the Living Dead worried about our zombification, the new films use the trope of a (computer) virus to suggest that the numbing process is signficantly shorter than we'd first thought.