PLEASE NOTE that this class is a live, in-person only event at the Brooklyn Horror Film Festival. It will not be streamable. Tickets must be purchased through the festival, and this event is not covered by the Miskatonic season pass.
What if zombies, ghosts, and revenants aren’t frightening because they’re dead? What if they are horrifying because of excessive, uncanny vitality?
Moving from ur-texts like WHITE ZOMBIE and NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, to modern classics like RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD and RE-ANIMATOR, Professor David Bering-Porter reveals how the undead embody our deepest anxieties about forms of life that refuse to die, far exceeding the limits of their natural lifespan. This excessive vitality extends beyond zombie cinema, manifesting in science-fiction nightmares of “grey goo” scenarios as seen in THE BLOB. Even apocalyptic revelations like 28 DAYS LATER reflect cultural fears rooted in biological reality: cancerous cells that refuse to stop dividing, viral infections overwhelming their hosts, and ecosystems pushed beyond their breaking point.
In the latest collaboration with the Brooklyn Horror Film Festival, Miskatonic is proud to present David Bering-Porter’s canny analysis of the undead-as-reflection of society’s relentless consumption, expansion, and reproduction. Zombie cinema reveals an uncomfortable truth: in a world facing ecological collapse due to unchecked growth, the horror of excessive life might be a fate worse than death.
David Bering-Porter is Assistant Professor of Culture and Media at The New School in New York City. David has lectured, taught, and published on zombie movies and other forms of Black horror at the intersections of film, digital media, and technology. His current book project is a study of Undead Labor and the ways that race, labor, and value come together in the mediated body of the zombie as well as other examples of biological excess and his academic writing has appeared in journals such as Culture Machine, Critical Inquiry, Flow, MIRAJ, Post 45, and the Los Angeles Review of Books.
