OHIO professors to spread bites of zombie knowledge at Oct. 29 Science Café-Humanities Café

All Ohio University students, faculty, staff and community members are invited to a presentation on “Zombies: Distorted Reflections of the Human Mind,” at the Oct. 29 Science Café-Humanities Café.

Classics and Religious Studies Professor Fred Drogula and Associate Professor of English Mary Kate Hurley will lead the event, which will begin at 5 p.m. in the Baker University Center Front Room and shown over a livestream.

Coupons for free coffee, tea or hot chocolate will be available to the first 50 people in attendance, and T-shirts will be awarded during the event.

From “The Walking Dead” to “28 Days (and Weeks…and Years) Later,” zombies have truly gone viral in the 21st century. Hurley and Drogula will show how zombie stories can be used to explore important shifts in human thinking over the centuries.

Zombies are more than mere monsters in arts and literature—they are creations of the human mind. Because they are distorted reflections of human beings, studying monsters like the zombie hones our pattern recognition abilities and critical thinking skills, revealing how humans conceptualize their world through religion, magic, science, and literature. In other words, the living dead can help us better understand the living people who create – and fear – them.

Audience participation and questions during the presentation will be welcome.

• The event will also be shown over a livestream here.

Drogula has served as the Charles J. Ping Professor of Humanities since 2018 and is the advisor for the “Monsters in Literature Club.” His research specialties include ancient Greek and Roman history, the Roman Republic and Empire, ancient religion, ethnicity, and gender in the ancient world, as well as military history, and power, authority, and the state. In 2019 he published “Cato the Younger: A Life at the Collapse of the Roman Republic,” with Oxford University Press.  

Hurley has been on the Ohio University English faculty since 2013 and teaches medieval literature. Her research interests are Old and Middle English language and literature, Anglo-Norman literature, critical theory, speculative fiction, ecocriticism, the history of the English language, and American medievalism. In 2021, she authored “Translation Effects: Language, Time and Community in Medieval England,” with the Ohio State University Press.

The Science Café series is sponsored by the Office of the Vice President for Research and Creative Activity and the Ohio University chapter of Sigma Xi, the national science honor society. Topics are based on the research of OHIO faculty presenters and each event is dialogue/conversation between the presenters and audience.

The next Science Café of the fall semester will be held on Wednesday, Nov. 12, and will feature Assistant Professor of Physics Christian Drischler. 

For more information, see the Science Café website.