Description
Book SynopsisShows how our understanding of narratives of illness can by transformed by
recognizing the zombie metaphors within them and how the recent medicalization of
popular zombie narratives has added new dimensions to what is symbolized by this
figure.
Trade Review“Beautifully presented, with numerous illustrations and figures, this collection will make the reader approach the zombie with fresh eyes.”
—Andrew Peter Godfrey The Comics Grid
“This collection takes a most innovative and interdisciplinary approach to the very prevalent cultural phenomenon of the zombie. Instead of retracing conventional methodological pathways, the editors have done a remarkable job in guiding their contributors toward new and challenging perspectives on the subject. For anyone wanting a swerve from their own well-trodden paths researching or teaching the zombie, I wholeheartedly recommend a deep and thorough look into this book for inspiration.”
—Lars Schmeink Science Fiction Studies
“Lorenzo Servitje and Sherryl Vint have combined the disparate threads of medical science, the graphic novel, and zombie studies into an unlikely yet highly successful anthology of essays. By assembling a cast of some of the most influential scholars working today in these fields, they have produced a valuable interdisciplinary collection of thought-provoking and timely essays.”
—Kyle Bishop,author of How Zombies Conquered Popular Culture: The Multifarious Walking Dead in the 21st Century
“The Walking Med represents interdisciplinary scholarship at its best, situating the necropolitical stakes of zombie media in relation to the undead tropes of clinical discourse, addressing the liminal condition of the body—even life itself—under the regime of contemporary biomedicine. Ghastly smart stuff!”
—Colin Milburn,author of Mondo Nano: Fun and Games in the World of Digital Matter
“The Walking Med shows, in no uncertain way, the power of interdisciplinary inquiry at the intersection of medical humanities, visual culture, and monster studies. This highly innovative and original collection illustrates how contemporary zombie narratives and images help us think of crises and opportunities in medicine and health care systems. As a whole, The Walking Med convincingly argues that zombies are powerful and necessary symbols of medicine and its politics.”
—Marina Levina,coeditor of Monster Culture in the 21st Century: A Reader
Table of ContentsTable of Contents
Foreword
Steve Schlozman
Preface
Lorenzo Servitje and Sherryl Vint
Introduction
Lorenzo Servitje
Diagnosing Zombie Culture
1. Don’t Point that Gun at My Mum: Geriatric Zombies
Gerry Canavan
2. Viral Virulence, Postmodern Zombies, and the American Healthcare Enterprise in the Antibiotic Age
Kari Nixon
3. “The Cure Has Killed Us All”: Dramatizing Medical Ethics through Zombie and Period Fiction Tropes in The New Deadwardians
Tully Barnet and Ben Kooyman
Reading the Zombie Metaphor
4. The Walking Med: Zombies, Comics, and Medical Education
Michael Green, Daniel George, and Darryl Wilkinson
5. Zombie Toxins: Abjection and Cancer’s chemicals
Juliet McMullin
6. Administering the Crisis: Zombies and Public Health in the 28 Days Later Comic Series
Sherryl Vint
Visualizing Medical Zombies
7. Blurred Lines and Human Objects: The Zombie Art of George Pfau
Sarah Juliet Lauro
8. Open Up a Few Zombie Brains: Objectivity, Medical Visuality, Brain Imaging in The Zombie Autopsies
Lorenzo Servitje
9. The Anorexic as Zombie Witness: Illness and Recovery in Katie Green’s Lighter Than My Shadow
Dan Smith
