Books of the Dead: Reading the Zombie in Contemporary Literature

Books of the Dead: Reading the Zombie in Contemporary Literature
by: Tim Lanzendörfer (Author)
Publisher:University Press of Mississippi
Publication Date: 8 Aug. 2018
Language:English
Print Length:226 pages
ISBN-10:9781496821140
ISBN-13:9781496821140
Book Description
From The Walking Dead to World War Z, a serious study of the zombie in literature
About the Author
Review Tim Lanzendörfer proves himself both a masterful writer and a master teacher as he opens up some of the most popular and powerful texts in zombie literature to show how and why this narrative has overrun the planet. Books of the Dead is essential reading for those who read zombie literature, but it also suggests why all of us should be reading it.–Greg Garrett, author of Entertaining Judgment: The Afterlife in Popular Imagination and Living with the Living Dead: The Wisdom of the Zombie ApocalypseTim Lanzendörfer’s Books of the Dead makes a significant contribution not only to the growing body of literature surrounding the popular culture figure of the zombie, but to conversations in the dynamic and expanding fields of popular culture and contemporary literary studies more generally. While there has been a good deal of scholarship on the figure of the zombie in film and television, far less attention has been offered to the recent, and to some surprising, rise of the figure to a new prominence in contemporary fiction. It is to this shortcoming that Books of the Dead responds, offering original, insightful, and far-reaching readings of a rich array of zombie narratives in a number of different genres and forms. I am confident the book will be of great interest to a wide readership and make an excellent addition to the superb body of work in popular culture and literary studies published by University Press of Mississippi.–Phillip E. Wegner, author of Life between Two Deaths, 1989-2001: U.S. Culture in the Long Nineties and Shockwaves of Possibility: Essays on Science Fiction, Globalization, and Utopia About the Author Tim Lanzendörfer, Frankfurt, Germany, is assistant professor of American studies at the Obama Institute for Transnational American Studies at the University of Mainz, Germany. His book, The Professionalization of the American Magazine: Periodicals, Biography, and Nationalism in the Early Republic, won the 2013-2014 Research Society for American Periodicals’ Book Prize, which recognizes the best title published by an academic press in the field of American periodical studies.