The objective of “Theorizing Zombiism 2: Undead again” is to promote interdisciplinary scholarship on one of the most prevalent, yet critically understudied cultural metaphors in contemporary popular culture, namely zombies and zombiism.

  • EXTENDED Deadline for abstract submission: March 10, 2021
  • Acceptance confirmation: April 10, 2021.
  • Conference dates: July 29-31, 2021
Organizer: Department of Languages and Literatures

The zombie as an allegory for cultural, social, and scientific analysis spans almost every discipline including humanities, biology, mathematics, anthropology, economics, and political science. This range of use for the zombie narrative is a clear indication of its adaptability and viability as a distinct framework for critical theory. Theorizing Zombiism 2: Undead again will thus serve as a timely and much-needed platform for the development of international and interdisciplinary relationships between researchers, educators, practitioners and other interested parties.

Note that we are hoping that the majority of the events at this conference can take place in a live, synchronous format. Having said that, we will also take advantage of alternative formats for participation and presentations, including (but not limited to) synchronous digital presentations, recorded presentations and virtual social events. Please note that in addition to the main conference, we are also hosting a workshop on ‘Teaching the Zombie’ (see below for details).

For the main conference, contributors are encouraged to provide discipline specific, and interdisciplinary, examinations of the zombie with the purpose of formulating an overall theoretical structure of Zombiism.

Some Potential Topics, both discipline specific and non-discipline specific, could be (but not limited to):

  • Nationalism through the zombie narrative (e.g. films like Le Horde (French), Cockneys vs Zombies (British), Dead Meat (Ireland), Ravenous (French Canadian), Zombieland (US American)).
  • Zombie Infections as a Metaphor for Pandemics.
  • Zombie Phenomenology/Philosophy/Psychoanalysis.
  • The Undead in Myth & Folklore (Zombies by other names in myths and legends, such as those found in Greek, Norse, Chinese and Egyptian mythologies, among others).
  • Globalization, Refugees, and Migration.
  • Gender/Ethnicity/Race and the Undead.
  • Zombies in Popular Culture: Re-evaluating the function of horror in society.
  • Expanding Praxis: Evaluating the expanding Zombie trope into other art forms and fields.
  • Historical/Literary Mash-ups: Re-telling historical events and/or literary works through Zombiism and other horror tropes (Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, Queen Victoria: Demon Hunter, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, Paul Is Undead: The British Zombie Invasion, etc).
  • Undead digital objects and issues of digital curation/Undead archival objects.
  • Zombies in Games (e.g. video games such as Resident Evil, The Last of Us, Plants vs. Zombies or board games like Zombicide, Dawn of the Zeds, Carnival Zombie, among others).
  • Legal Zombiism: Law and Legislation that refuses to die.
  • Ecocritcal Zombiism.
  • Science/Science Fiction: The science of Zombiism/The Zombification of science.
  • Zombiism and visual culture and art history.
  • Zombies and Consumer Capitalism
  • Linguistic perspectives on the undead – e.g.  genre or text type analysis via a corpus, the linguistic construction of the undead in popular culture, the types of cognitive verbs are used in zombie narratives, among others.

Theorizing Zombiism 2 Workshop: Teaching the Zombie

As part of the Theorizing Zombiism 2 Conference, we are seeking proposals for a workshop entitled “Teaching the Zombie.” This workshop aims to create a space in which scholars from a variety of disciplines can discuss how they integrate or plan to integrate Zombie Studies into their classes. As one of the objectives of the conference is to encourage international and interdisciplinary relationships among scholars, our hope is that this workshop can foster connections through discussions of pedagogical practice.

Workshop panelists will share zombie-themed assignments and activities intended for their classes as well as hold an informal discussion on teaching zombiism more generally. We welcome proposals focused on teaching zombies within any discipline.

Each panelist will prepare a short (5 minutes or less) presentation of an assignment or activity they use in their courses or plan to use in their courses that utilizes Zombie Studies. The workshop panelists will then engage in an informal discussion of teaching zombiism and a Q & A with the audience. Ideally, we will later collect the assignments to share on the Zombie Studies Network website.

Please submit a 300-word abstract that provides a description of the ways you have integrated zombies/zombiism/zombie studies into your courses (or hope to integrate zombies into your courses) alongside a description of your proposed assignment or activity.

Please note that proposals may be submitted for both a conference presentation for Theorizing Zombiism 2 as well as for this workshop.

While the conference organizers are hoping that the majority of the conference events will take place in a live, synchronous format, we are aware that this workshop may need to accommodate alternative formats for participation.

Send abstracts to:

For the main conference, please send abstracts of 300 words to theorizingzombiism@gmail.com by March 10, 2021.

For the workshop, please send abstracts of 300 words to chera.d.kee@gmail.com by March 10, 2021.