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The Return of the Undead on Monday's Access Utah

A couple of years ago we took a fascinating look at zombies with Kyle Bishop, author of “American Zombie Gothic: The Rise and Fall (and Rise) of the Walking Dead in Popular Culture.” Bishop says that zombie movies reflect our cultural anxieties.

Such movies and TV shows have addressed the violence of the Vietnam War, fears of mass annihilation during the Cold War, and anxieties related to 9/11.  Interest in the undead has only intensified since then. AMC’s “The Walking Dead” is the top-rated cable show and “World War Z” was a recent top-selling movie. And now zombies are invading academia; increasing numbers of professors are teaching and researching cultural history related to the undead in disciplines ranging from economics to religion. We’ll talk about this phenomenon and investigate what it means with Kyle Bishop, Associate Professor & English Department Chair at Southern Utah University.

Tom Williams worked as a part-time UPR announcer for a few years and joined Utah Public Radio full-time in 1996. He is a proud graduate of Uintah High School in Vernal and Utah State University (B. A. in Liberal Arts and Master of Business Administration.) He grew up in a family that regularly discussed everything from opera to religion to politics. He is interested in just about everything and loves to engage people in conversation, so you could say he has found the perfect job as host “Access Utah.” He and his wife Becky, live in Logan.