Thesis advisor: Stephen Pfohl / This work addresses the globally urgent need to understand the social origins of the recent surge in authoritarian and populist social movements across Europe and the Americas. It analyzes how themes of tribalism, confidence in medical science, and confidence in military violence changed over the years in the retelling of stories in popular culture. The focus is I Am Legend and Day of the Dead – two series of American film remakes of popular science fiction stories that feature pandemic disease and the threat of what are here referred to as “Diseased Others” – the transformed, humanoid Others who have caught the disease. The qualitatively-driven approach exhibits an original methodological contribution to the discipline of sociology, offering several innovations via the coding schemes used and an adaptation of grounded theory for multiple sample sets of films. The data consulted include transcriptions of dialogue from films, reviews in popular news sources, interviews with cast and crew, box office data, and data from the General Social Survey. Within these examples of “Diseased Others” science fiction, themes of tribal morality and confidence in medical science and the military have followed a discernible trajectory. This trajectory is of narrowing moral scope toward loyalty to one’s own in opposition to outside groups, and embracing military violence as a positive solution to threats to the “normal” population. In general, medical science is also increasingly positioned as dangerous and blameworthy (even if also capable of positive intervention). This trajectory thus displays a heightening of what are identified for the present study as three “elements of authoritarian populism”: tribalism, distrust of rational institutions, and willingness to resort to violence. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2019. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Sociology.

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In the early decades of the twenty-first century William Shakespeare’s works and figure began to arise in Young Adult adaptations and transnarratives focusing upon the undead. These works of werewolf, vampire, and zombie fiction represented Shakespeare as a creature of the undead or as a heroic savior. I argue that the figure of Shakespeare appears as an ambivalent symbol of corrupt authority or redeeming power within these YA undead adaptations because we are unable to reconcile Shakespeare’s centrality in literary studies with our twenty-first century social, political, and moral ideals such as multiculturalism, gender equality, and race relations. Essentially, these undead adaptations manifest the figure of Shakespeare as a crisis of our own faith in the “dead white European male” model of authority. Many of the works offer a rather dim view of the author and the cultural authority that he once represented. And the image these YA narratives conjure is often that of a zombie Shakespeare who is both immortal and rotting. Or alternatively, the absolute power of a vampire Shakespeare: cold, white, male, feeding upon the blood of the living. I argue that the YA protagonists must destroy the corrupt authority figures who hold power over them to create a “new world order” in these narratives, and Shakespeare’s position as “the author of authors” serves as the prime target. Alternatively, the contrasting narratives place Shakespeare in opposition to the undead hordes that are attacking humanity. In these novels and films, the figure of Shakespeare is an iteration of viable knowledge and authority solving not only his era’s problems, but those of our own, as well. I argue that these narratives seek to renew and add to Shakespeare’s authority through a metaphor of undead hybridity. By analyzing the werewolf or zombie-hunter in both film and literature, I demonstrate that many narratives utilize Shakespeare as a hybrid of both historical/literary authority and our own modern ideals. Rather than simply wolf or slayer, the Shakespeare of these narratives is both early modern authority and twenty-first century social/political hero.

Det här arbetet syftade till att undersöka om de skakningar och ryck som uppstår vid en dålig motion capture-inspelning, kan användas till fördel i skräcksammanhang och utveckla den skrämmande egenskapen hos en zombiekaraktär. Som bakgrund har undersökningen gått igenom litteratur kring Zombies, The uncanny valley, Das Unheimliche och deras förhållande till spel.Till det material som skapades till undersökningen genomfördes en motion capture-inspelning och sedan skapades tre stycken videoklipp föreställande en zombie. Datan ur inspelningen redigerades på tre olika sätt och varierade mängden ryckighet i zombiens rörelser. Undersökningen utfördes med intervjuer av både icke-skräckerfarana och skräckerfarna informanter.Resultatet visade att det klipp där skak och ryck tillförts uppfattades som mest läskigast av en majoritet av informanterna. Slutsatsen skulle däremot ha kunnat validerats i högre utsträckning med fler intervjuade informanter.

Thesis (M.A.)--Baylor University, 2009. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 53-54).

The deterioration of reason - defined as the faculty of thinking and its functioning in all human beings - is an essential question in Francophone Sub-Saharan literary and cinematographic fictions. This is one of many possible interpretations that can be derived from some novels and films produced during the period from 1950 to 2000 in this region. These cultural productions span an era marked in Africa by the "historical facts" of anticolonial struggles, decolonization, and (re) constructions of newly sovereign states that gained their independence from the European nations to which they had been subjected. The juxtaposition of these works leads to a critical realization: Half a century after the decolonization movements, African societies remain so dysfunctional that one is forced to ask if their inhabitants are still "normal," provided one can come to an agreement on what is normal. This speculation takes the form of a recurrent metaphor in the corpus: Africa is a continent ripped to shreds, irrevocably plunged into a dark night that has silenced reason. Taking up this metaphor, not only as a theme but also as a theoretical concern, I argue that the metaphoric uses of the night are an indication of a more critical reality, which is the intellectual journey of a population that has leapt into a state of impoverishment. I approach impoverishment both as the state of being deprived and the process leading to this deprivation, and I maintain my earlier characterization of intellectual as a synonym of reason. In this line, I describe intellectual impoverishment as the (progressive) loss of consciousness and rationality that befalls a large population of the continent. This loss is portrayed through the appearance and proliferation of various paradoxical figures that embody the "spiritual death" of the people. One portrayal of this death, the transformation of African populations into zombies, then serves to flesh out the concept of intellectual impoverishment. Thus, this dissertation investigates the socio-political processes through which critical thinking is annihilated in Sub-Saharan Africa, through an analysis of literary and cinematographic fictions by francophone authors of this region. This dissertation is written in French.

Considering the amount of media created around the zombie and the sustained interest in its role in our society, we can clearly see that a cultural phenomenon is underway, and it is important for us to question this phenomenon in order to gain some understanding of how and why its appeal has stretched so far. The zombie is somehow enthralling, and it is my opinion that this is in part because the zombie is a study of what it means to be human in the postmodern world. My main purpose here is not to ask why zombies are popular or why people are enthralled by horror films of any kind. Instead I wish to investigate what zombies mean to us in our culture and society. A study of this culture offers invaluable insight into our own contemporary Western society and culture, as the zombie provides a physical form, embodying our fears and anxieties into something that is sharable and valuable to an increasing number of people. I examine the zombie's origins within the American Gothic tradition and explore its role as a barometer for social anxieties, focusing on issues of religion in the second chapter. I step away from the traditional view of zombie origins embedded in the Haitian voodoo practice of zombification and its implied post-colonial issues, and instead focused on the zombie as a Western European and American invention, looking at its folkloric and literary heritage. I also take a new perspective of the zombie and its relation to religion in order to explore the profound way the zombie genre can address contemporary concerns. I finish the study with a chapter devoted to a close reading of the film Shaun of the Dead in order to show how the zombie genre has shifted in tone and purpose in the new millennium. What I hope to accomplish in this study is to facilitate a new perspective of the zombie, its origins, its uses and its role in contemporary culture and society, and I hope to contribute in some small way a deeper understanding of where the zombie came from and what it means to us in the 21st century.

Chalmers (2007) has argued that any version of the phenomenal concept strategy will fail, given that phenomenal concepts will either fail to explain our epistemic situation, or fail to be physically explicable themselves. Carruthers and Veillet (2007) have offered a response, arguing that zombies do share our epistemic situation. In the following paper I aim to show that philosophical-zombies do not share our epistemic situation concerning phenomenal consciousness. I will begin with some background material regarding the general dialectic I am addressing in section (I) before outlining the debate between Chalmers (2007) and Carruthers and Veillet (2007) in more detail and its relevance for mind-body considerations in section (II). Next, in section (III) I will suggest a worry related to Carruthers and Veillet’s position: that phenomenal concepts fail to refer in zombie worlds in the first place. Finally, in section (IV) I will argue that even if a zombie’s phenomenal concepts successfully refer, there is still good reason to think that zombies will fail to share our epistemic situation. I will defend this claim by explaining three asymmetries between me and my zombie twin’s corresponding epistemic situations. / Master of Arts / In the following paper I defend the position that philosophical zombies don’t share our epistemic situation. Philosophical zombies are hypothetical creatures that are identical to humans concerning all physical and functional properties, yet lack any phenomenal experiences. While zombies have identical brain states compared to non-zombies, they lack any felt, private, and subjective experiences. Next, I understand epistemic situation in this paper as the justificatory status of one’s beliefs. So, I am arguing that the beliefs of a physical duplicate of me who lacked experiences would not be equally justified as mine. Specifically, I am responding to Carruthers and Veillet (2007) who argue that philosophical zombies do share our epistemic situation, so long as we allow the zombies’ beliefs to differ in content. That is to say, if we understand zombie beliefs to be about different states (other than phenomenal states), then there is an available physical referent for the zombie belief that will ensure all his beliefs are as equally justified as their non-zombie twin. I suggest a difficulty for the existence of such a referent, and point to a collection of asymmetries in justificatory status between the beliefs of zombies and non-zombies to argue that the Carruthers and Veillet (2007) strategy is unavailable.

Le présent mémoire se subdivise en deux parties. La première, intitulée L’homme qui murmurait à l’oreille des morts, consiste en un scénario original d’un long-métrage de fiction d’une durée approximative de 90 minutes. Avant d’aborder le scénario à proprement parler, une présentation du projet, du sujet, des principaux personnages et du traitement cinématographique envisagé sont présentés. Par la suite, vous pourrez lire le scénario dans son intégralité. Il s’agit de l’histoire d’un musicien et père de famille (Léo Major) qui, le jour de son anniversaire, doit composer avec le décès accidentel de sa femme et de sa jeune fille. Le cadeau que lui avaient acheté les défuntes lui est rendu et bouleverse son existence, car l’objet en question, un saxophone, possède l’étrange pouvoir de réveiller les morts. La seconde partie du mémoire porte sur la figure du zombie au cinéma, de ses origines à nos jours. Elle consiste à démontrer toute la richesse et la complexité de ce type de personnage très présent sur nos écrans et elle cherche à voir si le zombie d’autrefois est le même que celui d’aujourd’hui ou s’il a évolué en une entité différente. De plus, cette partie réflexive est l’occasion de situer ma propre création par rapport à l’évolution de la figure du zombie au cinéma.

Ten years after the outbreak of an aggressive, fast-acting virus that kills then reanimates those infected, the world has become a bleak, hostile place. Water and food are scarce, valuable commodities, and survivors cluster together for safety in isolated enclaves where life is cheap and debauchery is king. In the middle of this grim hell-on-earth, Huxley, a young boy, lives with his idealistic father. When the father is killed, Huxley falls in with Bracken, a rugged gun-forhire, a desperado in every sense of the word. Against his instincts, Bracken is compelled to deliver Huxley to safety, all the while being pursued by a ruthless warlord of the wasteland. Through their association, Bracken discovers that he still has the capacity for feeling, emotion, and empathy, something he thought long dead.