Zombies, Vampires, and Philosophy
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ADAM BARROWS is a doctoral candidate in English at the University of Minnesota. His research explores the connections between time and imperialism. Adam teaches courses in British and Postcolonial literature, and always worries about getting midterms graded before sunset.
NOËL CARROLL has reincarnated the ideas of so many dead philosophers that he has been re-animated as Andrew Mellon Professor of the Humanities at Temple University. Some of his tombstones include: The Philosophy of Horror, Beyond Aesthetics, Engaging the Moving Image, and, most recently, the Blackwell anthology, The Philosophy of Film and Motion Pictures, co-edited with the vampire Jinhee Choi.
SIMON CLARK is an artist, musician, and writer from Britain. He graduated from Goldsmiths College in 2003 with an M.A. in Fine Art. He regularly performs a one-man show called Sad, Sad Songs of Wretchedness and Death in which he sings a repertoire of country ’n’ western dirges from inside his homemade coffin. With song titles such as Cold Hole for Your Bones, Surrender to the Worm, and I’m Doggone Dead and I’m OK, he has become something of a self-styled authority on all things morbid and miserable. If commercial success is an Undead figure rising from its grave, Simon’s body of work remains very much buried. He remains hopeful however that one day his obsession with death might actually earn him a living.
PHILLIP COLE is a member of the Undead until he gets coffee in the morning. After that he is Reader in Applied Philosophy at Middlesex University, London, but still retains the power to turn students into zombies during his lectures. During his research into the spirit world he tried to strike a happy medium. His book, The Myth of Evil, published by Edinburgh University Press in 2006, and, fortunately, contains no attempts at humor.
JOHN DRAEGER is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Buffalo State College. His research interests include ethics, political philosophy, and philosophy of law. He doesn’t think that he’s ever met a vampire. But if he does, he says he’d welcome the opportunity to talk some philosophy over coffee and a cinnamon roll. After all, decency may demand it.
JOAN GRASSBAUGH FORRY is a Ph.D. candidate at Temple University where she is completing her dissertation on gender, subjectivity, and sport culture. Her research interests include feminist theory, Foucault, ethics, and critical race studies. She teaches philosophy and women’s studies at Temple, where she must regularly reprimand her students for gnawing on each other’s brains.
RICHARD GREENE is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Weber State University. He received his Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is the Executive Director for the Society for Skeptical Studies. Richard has taught corpses in logic, metaphysics, and epistemology.
LARRY HAUSER, when not lurching around Leelanau County in search of brains and feasting on the fine ones there, partakes of the brains of philosophy students and colleagues at Alma College and Michigan State University. His specialty is the philosophy of mind. He believes that computers really do think. Their electronic brains, however, are still too dry for his taste.
DALE (“FULL-METAL”) JACQUETTE, otherwise unemployable, is Professor of Philosophy at the Pennsylvania State University. There he teaches logic, metaphysics, and philosophy of mind to legions of the Undead, and, between episodes of going ballistic (hence the nickname), attends endless committee meetings featuring wildly implausible plots, fatuous, lusterless dialogue, and pathetically wretched action sequences that couldn’t be re-animated even by supernatural powers.
WILLIAM S. LARKIN is Associate professor of philosophy at Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville. As a result of having pretty badly misunderstood the idea that philosophy is the pursuit of the “Good Life,” Professor Larkin went into philosophy primarily for the money and the ghouls. Since at least half of that has not worked out nearly so well as he’d hoped, he’s trying to get out of philosophy by writing, directing, and starring opposite Kyra Schon in Romero and Juliet—a stage play about the undying love between two star-crossed and scab-encrusted Undead lovers set in suburban Pittsburgh.
K. SILEM MOHAMMAD once played Dracula on stage (don’t get too excited, it was a junior college production in Modesto, California). He is Assistant Professor of English and Writing at Southern Oregon University, and has taught courses on zombies and the horror film. He is the author of three books of poetry: Deer Head Nation (2003), A Thousand Devils (2004), and Breathalyzer (2006). His blog {lime tree} (http://limetree.ksilem.com) routinely addresses such topics as “dead kitten poetics.” Spooky!
LEAH A. MURRAY is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Weber State University. She earned her Ph.D. in 2004 at the University of Albany, focusing on American Politics and Political Theory. While her students are pretty sure she is not Undead, the black cat and broom in her office make them suspicious of her witchy status.
TED M. PRESTON is the current head of the philosophy program at Rio Hondo College in Whittier, California, and received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Riverside. His philosophical interests include Nietzsche, self-fashioning, and martial artistry. Despite being one of the “children of the night,” he finds himself routinely teaching early a.m. classes. Only by sheer force of will (and coffee) does he refrain from bursting into flame when greeted by the dawn, and collapsing into dust when stepping foot into the classroom. When not reflecting on Unlife, he extols the practical benefits of philosophy, and believes firmly that an unexamined life is not worth Undeath.
RACHEL ROBISON is pursuing a PhD in Philosophy at UMass, Amherst. She loves both pop culture and philosophy (the former slightly more than the latter). She is co-editor (with Richard Greene) of The Golden Compass and Philosophy: God Bites the Dust. Her work has appeared in Quentin Tarantino and Philosophy: How to Philosophize with a Pair of Pliers and a Blowtorch and The Legend of Zelda and Philosophy: I Link Therefore I Am. Her favorite form of exercise is patrolling for vampires in her neighborhood cemetery.
HAMISH THOMPSON obtained his doctorate from the University of Edinburgh in 2002 in Philosophy of Mind after many “zombified” years as a student. He currently teaches a wide range of courses as a part-time instructor at the University of Louisville and Western Kentucky University. Since arriving in the US in 2001 from his homeland of Scotland, he has driven the equivalent of four times round the globe, commuting often in a state of being “awake, but unaware,” or perhaps conscious “of” rather than conscious “that.” His main goal is to become a stationary reflective educator.
EILEEN TOWNSEND has been a young student at Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, New York, since 1928. She is a member of several midnight societies whose secret and decadent goings-on include trolling the subways for unsuspecting workmen, cruising the newest night-clubs, and romantic poetry. Unlike her victims, her grades never suffer.
MANUEL VARGAS is currently working as a philosophy professor in Northern California for some folks known as the Society of Jesus, a clandestine wing of an obscure group known as the Roman Catholic Church. While one of his teachers in graduate school was reputed to be a vampire, and while Vargas can be killed by a silver bullet or wooden stake through his heart, holy water does not harm him. Yet.
MATTHEW WALKER grew up in Pittsburgh, where he hung out at malls and longed to star as a pasty-faced extra in a George Romero zombie film. Instead, he ended up as a pasty-faced philosophy graduate student at Yale University, where he’s currently writing a dissertation on Aristotle’s ethical theory.
DOUGLAS GLEN WHITMAN is Associate Professor of Economics at California State University, Northridge, where he feeds on state taxpayers. His office is located atop a Hellmouth, as the College of Business and Economics doubled as Sunnydale High during the final season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
WAYNE YUEN received his M.A. in Philosophy at San Jose State University and is Professor of Philosophy at Ohlone College in Fremont, California. His primary philosophical interest is applied ethics, but he has recently rediscovered alchemy. He is currently researching a cure for zombification, largely
consisting of caffeine and sugar, the secrets to life itself.
Hemolytic Index
Aaliyah
Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy (movie)
abject, concept of
abjection in horror fiction
Ackerman, Forrest J.
Addicted to Murder (movie)
adolescence, as time of anxiety
aesthetics
Akasha, Queen (vampire)
Angel (vampire)
Angel (TV show)
Aquinas, Thomas (mortal)
Aristotle on beauty on happiness on material goods Nicomachean Ethics on pleasure Politics on virtue
Armand (vampire)
athanatos
Auguet, Roland
authenticity, questioning concept of
Badham, John
badness, state of, objective versus comparative
Banderas, Antonio
Barely Legal Lesbian Vampires (movie)
Bartky, Sandra Lee
Bathory, Elizabeth
beauty: as appearing natural and human bodies philosophical views of as social construct
behaviorists, on mental states
Bellamy, Madge (character)
Bergson, Henri
Berkowitz, David
Blade (comic books and movies)
Blade Runner (movie)
Blah, Count (vampire)
Blanchot (vampire)
blood drinking Christ’s emotional impact of healing powers of and immortality made in the bone marrow myths and legends and personal identity ties of and preservation of youth
bodies, as constructed
borders and boundaries: and demonization and fear of outside
Bordo, Susan
Boreanaz, David
Boyle, Danny
Brabant, Siger de (vampire)
brain, as computer
Bram Stoker’s Dracula (film)
Bronte, Charlotte and Anne
Brooks, Max: The Zombie Survival Guide
Bruno, Giordano
Buffy Summers (vampire slayer)
Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV show) complexity in
Bunnicula (children’s book)
Burton, Tim
Cahling, Andreas
Carmilla (movie)
Carpenter, John
Cash, Johnny
Cazotte, Jacques: The Devil in Love
Chalmers, David
Christ
Christensen, Dan (vampire)
Chrysippus
civilization, and instincts
Civil Rights movement
Claudia (vampire)
Cleckley, Hervey
Cohen, G.A.
Collins, Barnabas
communitarianism
Compton, Bill (character in True Blood)
conceptual truths
Cooper, Karen (character)
Cooper, Mr., (character)
Coppola, Francis Ford
corpse, as symbol of the abject
Corpse Bride (movie)
craving and compulsion, difference between
Creed, Barbara
Crofton, Clara (character)
Cruise, Tom
Cullen, Edward (character in Twilight)
The Curse of Frankenstein (movie)
The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (movie)
Dahmer, Jeffrey
Dalai Lama
Daly, Carol Jones: The Legion of the Living Dead
D’Amato, Joe
Dante Alighieri
Dark Shadows (TV series)
Dawn of the Dead (movie) civilization and instincts in communitarian concern in graspingness in hedonism in individualism in as satirizing consumerism and social contract theory
Day of the Dead (movie) and Freudian theory individualism/communitarianism in and legacy of repressive civilization and nonrepressive civilization zombie organization in
Day, William Patrick
death: attraction of badness of criteria for deprivation view desire-frustration view as experiential blank fears of as part of humanity
Deleuze, Gilles: on composition/ decomposition
Den Uyl, Douglas
Derrida, Jacques
Descartes, René
Diken, Bulent
Donnie Darko (movie)
Dracula (novel)
Dracula, Count attributes of changing appearance of identity of as inauthentic being and moral emotion as morally accountable narcissism of as selfless
Dracula (movie) difference from novel
Dracula’s Dirty Daughters (movie)
Dracula 2000
dream imagery, psychoanalysis on
Drusilla (vampire)
dualism
Dunst, Kirsten
Emerson, Ralph Waldo (mortal)
Empedocles
Epicurus
epiphenomena
epistemology
Eros
Ertz, Susan: Anger in the Sky
eudaimonia
evil: as distinct from creepy examples of malevolent sense of
factory farms
fear of the dead
female vampires: as childlike and feminine norms as femmes fatales
Fido (movie)
Finch, Atticus (character)
Fisher, Claire (character)
Fisher, David (character)
The Fog (movie)
Foree, Ken
Forever Knight (TV series)
Foucault, Michel The Use of Pleasure
Frankenstein monster
free will
Freud, Sigmund on civilization and repression of instinct on return of the repressed on the uncanny
Fulci, Lucio
functionalists
Furley, David
Gacy, John
Galen
Gelder, Ken
Germain, St. (vampire)
Ghidrah the Three-Headed Monster (movie)
Giles, Rupert (character)
God
“good guy” vampires
Gordon, Christine
Gregory the Great, Pope
Greg the Bunny (TV show)
Gunn, James: The Immortals
Halloween and Catholicism death imagery in horror films released during paradox of parody and levity in as remedy for fear of fear
Halloween (movie)
Halloween imagery, psychoanalytic view of
Halperin, Victor
Hambly, Barbara: Those Who Hunt the Night
Hamilton, George
Hamilton, Laurel: Anita Blake series
Harker, Jonathan (character)
Harker, Mina (character)
Harris, Charlaine: Southern Vampire Mysteries
Harrison, Ford
Harrison, Kim
Harvey, William
Hawking, Stephen
Hayek, Friedrich A.
Hazlitt, Henry
heart as center of consciousness
hedonistic paradox and higher mental pleasure
Hegel, Georg
Heidegger, Martin Being and Time on death and Nazi party
Hemingway, Ernest: Death in the Afternoon
Hildesheim, Immanuel
History Is Dead (zombie history book)
Hitler, Adolf
Hobbes, Thomas Leviathan
Hollywood zombies
Hopper, Dennis
horror fiction, abjection in
horror films: corpses in pleasure and disgust in critique of psychoanalytic view of as rite of passage as terrifying as testing fear factor
Huff, Tanya: Blood series
humans, and animals, comparing
Humans versus Zombies (game)
Hume, David: on the self
humors, bodily
The Hunger (movie)
Iago
immortality: and blood and boredom and question of productivity
individualism
Interview with the Vampire (movie). See also Rice, Anne: Interview with the Vampire
Invasion of the Body Snatchers (m
ovie) psychological continuity in substitution of personality in
Iscariot, Judas
I Strahd: The Memoirs of a Vampire
Itchy and Scratchy (cartoon)
I Walked with a Zombie (movie)
Jack O’Lantern, as undead
Jesus of Nazareth. See also Christ
Jones, Ernest On the Nightmare
Jordan, Neil
Jovovich, Milla
Kant, Immanuel: on beauty Critique of Pure Reason
Kendra (vampire slayer)
Kennedy, John F.
Kierkegaard, Søren (mortal)
kinds of things natural nominal
Knight, Nick (character)
Kripke, Saul
Kristeva, Julia
Krueger, Freddy (character)
Land of the Dead (movie) Big Daddy in class structure in individualism/communitarianism in Kaufman in and nonrepressive civilization and social contract theory
zombie evolution in
zombie organization in
Langella, Frank
laughter, for emotional control
Lavec, Étienne (vampire)
Leatherface (character)
Lecter, Hannibal (character)
lesbian vampires
Lestat (vampire) immorality of as rational