Christopher M. Moreman

This came at a perfect time because I was obsessed with zombies in my early adult years. I will say it took a while to digest since I wasn't too keen on essays as a format, but I was very glad that I did take the time to get through it because I thoroughly enjoyed the different takes- my favorite being the ones on video game culture and zombies, as well as the points around feminism and society in the midst of a zombie apocalypse. Definitely a vital piece to a collection for any zombie lover.… (mehr)

I was writing something that included an undead character. Not a vampire or zombie in the sense that we think of them today, but more along the lines of the Haitian Voodoo/Vodou zombies. As research I read Zora Neal Hurston's Tell My Horse and attempted to read this book, Race, Oppression and the Zombie: Essays on Cross-Cultural Appropriations and the Caribbean Traditions. The Hurston book was great - informative and helpful. This however...dry as a bone. I know it's chock-full of great information but I just could not even get past the introduction.

It may be my loss, but I was unable to continue with this and ultimately passed it on to my sister who is a huge zombie film fanatic and loves to read this sort of dry analysis of the horror film genre. Best of luck to her.… (mehr)

If you're looking for a fun, intellectual romp through the geektastic joys of zombie movies, books, comics, and games, you're probably looking in the wrong place. This book veers toward more serious and dense academic discourse, and the fun in most case gives way to metal cartwheeling, leaving the reading experience rather dry.

The first essay, "Your Zombie and You," for example spends a significant amount of time defining kinds of fear with the differences between so subtle I went cross-eyed trying to make sense of it and was nearly scared off of reading the rest of the book.

Most of the rest of the essays managed to be both interesting and readable, however. "Porn of the Dead" looks at a pornographic film of the same title, which actually subverts gendering to present a somewhat feministy perspective.

Other essays look at the use of zombie as metaphor in modern case law and examine the references to the living dead within the Bible. The intertanglement of religion and blasphemy within the Lucio Fulci zombie movies is also examined with an emphasis on how the visceral images within the movies go beyond schlock as they leave a lasting effect on the viewer.

"The Mutated Spirit" looks at Hollywood zombies a psychopomps, couriers to the land of the dead. The zombies in this case are couriers of individual souls, but of whole societies.

I also enjoyed both essays examining the connection between zombies and video game culture, as well as the final essay, "Plans are Pointless: Staying Alive Is as Good as It Gets," which looks at movies that reveal how sociology breaks along new lines when society is faced with the walking dead.

Zombies Are Us presents an opportunity to look at the walking dead from a multitude of new points of view, and reveals just how thoroughly these monsters have become a part of our modern culture. For the most part, it's worth the the work the reading requires.… (mehr)

Zombies Are Us brings together a solid array of philosophical, political, and sociological treatises on the zombie as a marker of (in)humanity in contemporary society. This edited volume is the second in two part series by editors Christopher M. Moreman, an assistant professor of philosophy at California State University—East Bay, and Cary James Rushton, and associate professor of English at St. Francis Xavier University (Nova Scotia). Zombies Are Us takes a different tack from the companion volume, Race, Oppression and the Zombie: Essays on Cross-cultural Appropriations of the Caribbean Tradition (2011), which looked at issues of globalization, colonialism, and the ethnic “Other,” by interrogating the deeper meaning of zombies. In doing so, the collected essays situate the current zombie turn within the field of ontology, thus making this book more about the “Us” than the “Them” (with the latter being the focus of the companion text).
The book is divided into three sections: “The Zombie in Humanity;” “Zombies in the Sacred;” and “Zombies into the Future.” The first explores a wide variety of issues from the use of the zombie trope in judicial writing to gender roles in zombie pornography. These essays proved to be the most far-ranging in intellectual terms, sometimes deviating from actually discussing zombies for pages on end. The strongest section is certainly the one on religion, with Keira McKenzie’s essay on the zombie as a psychopomp standing head-and-shoulders above the other well-written and conceived essays (including a Buddhist meditation on the zombie). Despite its promise, the final set of essays meandered a bit too much, fluctuating between over-reaching conceptual exercises and detail-driven pieces on the minutiae of videogames.
Overall, Zombies Are Us is a stimulating read, though only recommended for those with a deep and abiding interest in the walking dead and a fair grasp of literary and cultural theory. If you are looking for a good zombie romp, try World War Z or The Rising instead.… (mehr)