How One Professor is Using Zombies to Teach Marx

This summer, David Larson’s students have read Karl Marx’s critique of capitalism. They studied the same topic by watching soulless zombies munch up a shopping mall.

Pairing Manifesto of the Communist Party by Marx and Friedrich Engels with director George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead may seem an odder couple than Felix and Oscar.

Would it make more sense if we point out that the zombies’ craving for human-burgers serves as a metaphor for mindless consumer consumption? Or that Romero’s 1978 gore-fest made the New York Times’ list of the 1,000 greatest movies?

Before the month is out, Larson’s 17 students also will have viewed a werewolf, Frankenstein’s monster, cyborgs, and King Kong—all endorsing or disputing renowned philosophers and academic thinkers.

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