Talking zombie culture with Seneca College Professor Carmelo Tropiano

Carmelo Tropiano is an English and Liberal Studies professor at Seneca College who has been teaching the brand new course “zombie culture” for two years.

He has been actively engaging his students with his material and this course serves as a cool alternative for fans of zombie culture.

When asked to describe the course zombie culture, Tropiano had a lot to say.

“The course examines the modern phenomenon, even obsession, with zombies.  In our time of study, we’ll seek to uncover the reasons for why people of all ages are attracted to this soulless monster, he said. “We trace the origins of zombies to Haitian voodoo, or more precisely, Voudon, and then examine modern permutations of the genre, beginning with George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead.”

Tropiano, being a zombie culture fan himself talked about how the art of zombie culture is getting very popular.

“The ‘zombie craze’ may be seen as an art form or aesthetic —  video games, film, TV shows, and comic books are locales where zombies proliferate and perforate the culture,” he said.  “That people can find this creature in its various permutations means that no one is exempt from experiencing them in some form.”

Zombie culture has manifested its way into the urban culture. The zombie phenomenon permeates every possible form of cultural or media expression.

“Take ‘zombie walks,’ for example.  These take place ever year around Halloween in major urban centers in North America, suggesting that zombies are in some way tied to anxieties with urban life,” said Tropiano.

The growing interest in zombie culture increases each and every year. So why are people so fascinated in zombie culture?

“The interest lies in how the zombie can effect our own ways of being and seeing.  In zombie films, there is the thought that the expression itself is necessarily misanthropic; rather, the emphasis is more on what human beings can aspire to,” said Tropiano. “The originator of the modern zombie, George A. Romero, certainly may have had low expectations for human beings, but in the end, his work spawned an interest dedicated to exposing society’s ills while permitting characters to rise above and transcend themselves, as it were.”

Carmelo Tropiano has enjoyed every minute of teaching zombie culture and he hopes he can inspire his students to rise to any occasion, as would a survivor during a zombie apocalypse.

“The zombie genre provides opportunities for students to see themselves in the survivors who must rise to the challenge of a world that has collapsed (in every sense of the term) around them.  In aligning themselves with certain characters over others, they essentially can come to terms with the kind of society they want to build and inspire,” he concluded.