The Liberal Arts and Sciences Office (LAS) sat down with Dr. Amy Converse, an art history professor, to discuss her History of Zombie Films class, which ran this past fall. It has been a part of the art history catalog for over fifteen years, and for the first time, there will be two sections of it running this upcoming Fall 2025.
LAS: “First question is, ‘How did this course come about?’”
Converse: “The first time we offered it was pretty early on in my time at Woodbury, maybe 2009 or 2010, or something like that. There was a kind of moment in time where a bunch of zombie movies had come out. We were still sort of grappling with 9/11, and there was just this sort of spurt of them. Then, also, there was this change in the early 2000s when the zombies started moving really fast [and] they were always slow-moving beforehand. So for me, it was having seen a couple of genuinely really terrifying zombie movies and then just forcing everyone to thought-experiment, like, ‘What happens at the end of the world?’ I realized that the class itself was going to be a fun entry point to really difficult conversations about death and the afterlife, notions of survival, or ‘What are our priorities?’ So [the class is] a lens for talking about much larger issues, like the history of racism in America or the history of terrorism or violence, but doing it through a lens of popular culture that makes it quite accessible to a lot of students.
I mean, one of the questions that we always ask is, ‘The zombies are coming, what do you do?’ And it was interesting. The last time I taught the class, [the students] were all like, ‘I’m going to go find my friends.’ And I was like, ‘What about your families?’ And they were like, ‘No.’ And I was like, ‘Wow, post-COVID kids don’t really want to be around their parents anymore. They just wanted to find their friends.’”
LAS: “What do you enjoy about teaching this course?”
Converse: “I enjoy the conversations. We read the hardest theory in this class out of any class I teach. We’re reading poststructuralist theory about animals and animal sovereignty, we’re reading Freud. We’re reading a lot of really intense stuff, and they are taking these gigantic ideas and breaking them into bite-sized pieces that they can, not just consume, but also analyze and turn around and think about.
These conversations are really important to me, but also what I love is the group viewing experience for these films. Typically, when you have these types of screenings, everyone’s supposed to be quiet and not be on their phone, but that’s not the rule [in class]. You’re allowed to be like, ‘Look out behind you!’ So it does end up being where you can hear them; something will happen, and they’ll all roar. It’s quite fun.
I’ve done a really, I think, good job of trying to curate films that are really international. So we have two indigenous films, one’s from Canada, one’s from Australia, we have one from Japan from the early 2000s. Just trying to get diversity and representation for these movies. Although a couple of years ago, a student [asked], ‘Do you know what the Bechdel test is?’ And I was like, ‘Uh, yeah. Oh, did all the movies [fail the Bechdel test?] All of them?’ And she said, ‘All of them.’ I’m like, ‘Oh, okay. Sorry about that.’”
LAS and Converse laugh in commiseration that none of them passed, as considering historic female representation in movies, they are sadly not surprised at the discovery.
LAS: “Yeah, I don’t think the people making zombie movies are as concerned about passing the Bechdel test.”
Converse: “No, but I mean, couldn’t you just have one woman talk to another woman about something that isn’t a man? No? I mean, no? Okay. So still working on gender representation. But otherwise, it’s pretty diverse.”
LAS: “Very cool. What have been some of the students’ past projects?”
Converse: “There’ve been some great ones. Certainly, there’ve been some more strategic and practical ones about ‘Here’s what we’re gonna do.’ IKEA, everyone’s going to IKEA, or Costco, there’s that. I would say the most incredible student project we had was a couple of years ago, maybe after COVID but not far after COVID, where this kid created basically like an eHarmony.com dating profile [for the zombie apocalypse partners]. But it wasn’t online, it was physical. You had to fill out this paperwork and it was seven or eight pages [about] things that you enjoy or like. He took all of the responses and basically lined them up and then, this class was like 25 students or something, but he’s like, ‘We have two matches.’ So the matches were me and a gay 19-year-old Cambodian kid, and then the other match was a set of identical twin boys.”
LAS: “And these were the apocalypse partners?”
Converse: “Those were the apocalypse partners!”
LAS: “You guys would be able to survive the apocalypse together?”
Converse: “Right. I was kind of like, well, I’m pretty lazy. I don’t know.”
They both laugh.
Converse: “That was super fun. And that class was really excellent too. There was more than usual [number of] LGBTQIA students in there, and they were trying to put together this theory of zombieism as a form of transness, which I thought was really interesting. And then, this most recent time I taught [in Fall 2024], there was a huge conversation about consent and zombieism.”
LAS: “Oh, interesting.”
Converse: “Yeah, talking about zombie sexuality was a thing that we did.”
LAS: “Wait, I mean, because zombies are the ‘undead,’ they’re dead.”
Converse: “They’re still us though, you know?”
LAS: “Well, doesn’t that actually go back to a movie that was done, I want to say maybe 10 years ago, Warm Bodies or something like that?”
Converse: “Yeah, Warm Bodies, it was Shakespeare. It was Romeo and Juliet.”
LAS: “In zombies.”
Converse: “Yes.”
LAS: “How he was undead, but then he comes back alive [through love].”
Converse: “There’s this Japanese movie called Wild Zero and it’s also about love transcending the afterlife. Yes, you know, is love possible?”
LAS: Last question, “What do students get out of taking this course?”
Converse: “This course is very often a class that students will take in their final year of study, and almost always they’re students who have already taken a class with me. So it’s a bit of a reunion on some level. Then also, it’s an upper-division [general elective] three credits. So there’s a lot of graduating seniors and there is a senioritis vibe to it a little bit. But they show up, you know, they like the group atmosphere, they enjoy feeling like a team.”
LAS: “Is there anything else you want to share about this?”
Converse: “I think it’s going to be great, we cultivate a party atmosphere.”