In this episode, two scholars of English literature, Katherine Fusco and Stephen Pasqualina, investigate one of the most unsettling signs of the apocalypse in popular culture: the rise of the undead. Join us for a conversation about the mythology of zombies and the zombie trope in Severance.
Katherine Fusco writes about the way different media forms shape identity and encourage us to be either cruel or kind to one another. After completing a Ph.D. at Vanderbilt University, she spent several years working as the assistant director of the Vanderbilt Writing Studio. Since arriving at the University of Nevada, Reno, she has been proud to have her teaching honored by the Crowley Distinguished Professorship in the Core Humanities. She teaches courses on film, theory, and 19th and 20th century American literature at the University of Nevada, Reno. Katherine also writes about pop-culture for a number of national outlets.
Stephen Pasqualina is a postdoctoral fellow in the Core Humanities Program at the University of Nevada, Reno. He completed his Ph.D. in the department of English at the University of Southern California. While working toward his Ph.D., he attended the School of Criticism and Theory at Cornell University and the Futures of American Studies Institute at Dartmouth College. His research focuses primarily on modernist literature and visual culture, transnational American studies, science and technology studies, critical race studies, and 20th century historiography and historical theory. His current research is focused on how Zora Neale Hurston's writing, film, and photography mediates the long history of colonial slavery. This work is part of a larger book project that examines the relationship between second-stage industrialization and the U.S. historical imaginary from 1880 to 1945.
DISCUSSED
Haitian zombie myth, French colonialism, slavery, The Serpent and the Rainbow (film) by Wade Davis, White Zombies (film) by Bela Lugosi, The Magic Island (book) by William Seabrook, 1915 - 1934 US occupation of Haiti, The Walking Dead, Tell My Horse (book) by Zora Neale Hurston, Night of the Living Dead & Dawn of the Dead (films) by George Romero, Get Out (film) by Jordan Peele, Dawn of the Dead (2004 film) by Zac Snyder
