In fall 2019, to demonstrate our community college’s commitment to the humanities, a high-level administrator in academic affairs convened a Halloween-themed panel about monsters in literature. What better way to demonstrate devotion to the humanities than through an investigation of the inhuman?
A fellow English professor, tasked with chairing the panel, begged me to give a talk on zombies. I’ve been terrified of zombies since childhood, but my colleague seemed genuinely panicked, so I dashed together an annotated bibliography of some major works in the field. The next week, at the sparsely attended event in an air-chilled lecture hall, I delivered my summary and, I thought, terminated my obligation to the post-human oeuvre.
At home that evening, Netflix—in one of those eerie moments that reveal how closely our technology monitors us—recommended The Walking Dead. In Episode 1, protagonist Rick Grimes emerges from a coma into a world overrun by undead flesh-eaters. The viewer and Rick are placed in a precarious situation: we don’t know the rules of this new, terrifying world. We don’t know what to expect or whom to trust. The first few months that I watched the show, I had nightmares each night.
A few months after my uninspiring zombie presentation, my college—and much of the country—shut down. Bodies piled up at hospitals just a few miles from my apartment building: overflow corpses were stored in refrigerated trucks parked on the street. Medical staff worked days on end, unceasingly, struggling to manage the influx of patients.
During those early months of the pandemic, aside from the sirens that wailed day and night, the city was newly quiet. Essential workers and the occasional be-masked pedestrian were the only humans on the sidewalks. Those who could leave had hastily packed and fled upstate, out east, or to coastal villages in New England. The CDC issued conflicting advice about the virus’s transmission and prevention; government data to track outbreaks was erratic; nobody had toilet paper. For me, binge-watching The Walking Dead became cathartic.
There are times in the series when it seems like the core group of survivors will make it after all. These are the times when they band together and work for the good of the group. For example, in season three, they start a farm at a former prison. They face enormous difficulties: they clear the prison of its resident zombies, fence out the ever-encroaching undead hordes from the countryside, sacrifice some beloved characters, and suffer an outbreak of swine flu. Nonetheless, for a few episodes, many seem to have found a way to survive in the post-apocalyptic landscape.
When our college shut down, my colleagues and I taught to blank squares on Zoom. We met weekly via Teams to exchange tips and suggestions. Those of us who were tech-savvy helped those who were not. Our students who worked in food service or healthcare were charged with keeping society afloat at the expense of their academic dreams. Those employed in “non-essential” fields were suddenly laid off, unsure how they would survive. Many who fell ill in the early days of the pandemic died or faced long-term health challenges because of a lack of resources. Those who stayed physically healthy felt their mental health deteriorate.
Gradually, the characters in The Walking Dead exhibit various forms of sickness that manifest as aggression. The zombie virus makes people barbaric—less Rousseau and more Zola. Viewers are often reminded of the zombie-human connection. Frequently, zombie hand silhouettes appear through windows when the human characters are inside. This is a reminder: we are here, we were human, much like hand paintings found in caves evoke the pathos of early humans and, likewise, complicate the definition of human: some of these handprints were likely made by Neanderthals (Joyce).
In spring 2020, daily imperatives from central administration filled our inboxes. Track down students who have disappeared. Give incompletes instead of Fs. Nearly half of our department’s 125 course sections in spring 2020 were taught by part-time faculty paid per classroom hour. Asking part-time instructors to devote time outside of instructional hours and to be available to review work months after a class has ended equates to requesting unpaid labor. In this way, the college’s contingent instructional workforce found themselves in the same insecure state as many of their students: they were pressed into service supporting an entity that did not care for their well-being or offer job security in compensation for their effort. When enrollment further plummeted in fall 2020, many of those adjuncts were not even assigned a class and joined the ranks of the suddenly unemployed.
In the prison community, The Walking Dead survivors surmount many challenges; however, they cannot overcome the season four attack from the Governor, a maniacal despot whose army invades with powerful weapons. The Governor publicly executes a beloved leader of the prison community, then his followers run tanks through the fences and unload automatic weapons. The survivors, grappling with shock and trauma, scatter into the wilderness.
Nearly a year into the pandemic, while STEM departments like math and science and high-demand programs like nursing and vet tech remained intact, the department of English and humanities—already the largest multi-discipline department on campus—was hastily merged with a smaller department. Although the savings seemed negligible, we were told the merge was financially necessary. We didn’t even have an election for a new chair of the merged department. Instead, the chair of the smaller department was installed.
Human cultures are defined by the creative works they produce, the discoveries they research, and the theories they construct. The Walking Dead television series derives from the graphic novels, which, to my mind, suffer from misogynistic tropes and hackneyed gender stereotypes. In contrast, the television series contains narrative innovations and fresh characterization. For example, in the graphic novels, Carol is a ditsy single mother in her 30s. In the TV series, Carol is a competent woman in her 50s or 60s who uses the invisibility society confers on older women to ruthless advantage. Michonne, pure anger and vengeful fury in the novels, is also allowed to be nurturing and fun-loving in the series.
A liberal arts education prepares individuals to contribute to the achievements of humanity. Serendipitously, classes in the humanities teach skills and content that can also become vital in various careers. Angela Kang, a writer, show runner, and producer for The Walking Dead, has a BA in English and theater and an MFA in screenwriting. She confirms that her humanities background influenced the series: “‘It has helped in terms of coming up with story ideas, and it was very helpful that I took a class in Gothic Romanticism,’ she says. ‘Having classes that talked about politics in different eras was beneficial to me and was valuable in thinking about the world, people, and characters’” (Day of the Dead). I can’t help but wonder what would happen if Kang came to my community college as a student today and had to take out loans to afford the tuition. Would she have taken a chance as an English major or instead opted for a more secure employment track as a nursing or accountant major?
Our college is under extraordinary financial pressure, especially now as the Higher Education Emergency Relief Funds end—this money kept us and many other institutions afloat through the pandemic. Our tuition is likely to increase this year, which will be a hardship for our predominantly working-class students. As government funding for public colleges has declined over the past decades, institutions have increasingly relied on student tuition and fees (Flannery; Knox; Mitchell). This places colleges in a client-oriented business model. As such, our students are our customers. Most of our client-students want a program that provides a clear path to a lucrative career with benefits and security. They do not tend to enroll in college seeking enlightenment. From a fiscal perspective, in this client-centered model, it is logical to cut spending on the humanities. But by hollowing out the humanities, we shortchange our students before they have even had a chance to become the next cultural creators. Even worse, we risk zombification.
A zombie does not have consciousness, but it does have a type of primal volition. Zombies were once human. Their brains still have activity; otherwise, they could not shamble around on their murderous trajectory. In fact, in most zombie narratives, they can be vanquished by being shot or stabbed in the brain. However, they cannot form friendships; they do not have free will. They travel in groups by mere routine or happenstance. They do not remember their past. They have no narratives that function as mythologies, no theologies to help them make sense of phenomena. They don’t ponder the mysteries of the universe. They neither create nor appreciate art. They hear music not for its sublime or pleasing qualities but because it signals the presence of humans, their prey.
In The Walking Dead, each community the core group of survivors finds is eventually destroyed by other humans or zombies. “We are the walking dead,” one character says, as the group, forced out of yet another shelter, tries to blend in with the zombie hordes and survive in the wilderness. However, in this same season, a messenger—Aaron, who led the Israelites out of Egypt in Exodus—arrives to rescue the group.
Going into fall 2023, our college’s new president has returned our department to a manageable size, and we have a democratically elected chair. In-person classes are enrolling at a higher rate than online classes. Even so, our challenges remain daunting. We need to create paths to full-time employment for our adjunct instructors. Many talented educators left once it became clear how little their work was valued by the institution. We also need to increase academic and mental health support services to counteract the educational and emotional deficits our students have endured over these past three years. Unfortunately, we can barely afford to keep paying our current full-time faculty. Moreover, we struggle to retain our students: they do not necessarily believe that what we offer has value. Meanwhile, across the wider field of the humanities, AI threatens to disrupt creative endeavors, censorship is rampant, and television writers have gone on strike for a livable wage, in large part because of viewers like me who stream content on platforms that do not pay royalties to their originators.
Nonetheless, some humanities survivors live to fight another day—or at least to teach another semester. In the past month, our performing arts department performed a Tony Kushner play about fascism, the English department hosted a celebration of student work to launch the next edition of our literary journal, and, in just over an hour, I am heading downstairs for a student film festival. For now, complete zombification remains at bay, at least at my community college. But if undead narratives have taught us anything, it is that the inhuman influx is relentless. We must be ever wary.
Works Cited
“Day of the Dead.” Occidental College, 14 Nov. 2013, www.oxy.edu/magazine/issues/fall-2013/day-dead.
Flannery, Mary Ellen. State Funding for Higher Education Still Lagging | NEA. www.nea.org/advocating-for-change/new-from-nea/state-funding-higher-education-still-lagging.
Joyce, Christopher. “Cave Art May Have Been Handiwork of Neanderthals.” NPR, 22 Feb. 2018, www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2018/02/22/587662842/cave-art-may-have-been-handiwork-of-neanderthals.
Knox, Liam. “New York Pledges More Higher Ed Funds, but Deficits Run Deep.” Inside Higher Ed | Higher Education News, Events and Jobs, Feb. 2023, www.insidehighered.com/news/2023/02/21/new-york-pledges-more-higher-ed-funds-deficits-run-deep.
Mitchell, Michael, et al. “State Higher Education Funding Cuts Have Pushed Costs to Students, Worsened Inequality.” Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, Oct. 2019, www.cbpp.org/research/state-budget-and-tax/state-higher-education-funding-cuts-have-pushed-costs-to-students.