Obama, Zombies, and Black Male Messiahs

Posted in Articles, Barack Obama, Literary/Artistic Criticism, Media Archive on 2012-05-28 23:41Z by Steven

Obama, Zombies, and Black Male Messiahs

In Media Res
2009-10-01

Elizabeth McAlister, Associate Professor of Religion, African American Studies and American Studies
Wesleyan University

Insofar as they occupy the symbolic place of messiah in these zombie apocalypses, it interesting that from Ben in Night, to Peter in Dawn, and John in Day, to Robert Neville in I Am Legend, a central male hero is Black, two of whom are West Indian. All are solid, dependable, capable Black men who strategize and fight their way to survive the zombie outbreak. All Romero’s Black men make alliances with the one White woman in each group, who also makes it to the post-apocalypse.   What can we make of this interesting pattern that zombies seem to be the monsters it is the province of Black men to vanquish? We might wonder, in turn, what it is about whiteness in zombie films that the Black male secular messiah characters point to… …Obama has been said to possess an image in the American psyche that lends itself to being cast as a Magical Negro; he has also been referenced in a messianic idiom, and scores of commentators have noted the many times that people use exalted, prophetic vocabulary in describing Obama. Obama was elected in the teeth of an economic super-crisis, a hero who would slay the zombie-banks threatening to cannibalize the nation’s funds. Obama is also figured as a multi-racial person who will usher in America’s multiracial future (the implicit future of these zombie films)…

Read the entire essay here.

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Slaves, Cannibals, and Infected Hyper-Whites: The Race and Religion of Zombies

Posted in Anthropology, Articles, Barack Obama, Caribbean/Latin America, Media Archive, Religion on 2012-05-28 17:59Z by Steven

Slaves, Cannibals, and Infected Hyper-Whites: The Race and Religion of Zombies

Anthropological Quarterly
Volume 85, Number 2, Spring 2012
pages 457-486
DOI: 10.1353/anq.2012.0021

Elizabeth McAlister, Associate Professor of Religion, African American Studies and American Studies
Wesleyan University

The first decade of the new millennium saw renewed interest in popular culture featuring zombies. This essay shows that a comparative analysis of nightmares can be a productive method for analyzing salient themes in the imaginative products and practices of cultures in close contact. It is argued that zombies, as the first modern monster, are embedded in a set of deeply symbolic structures that are a matter of religious thought. The author draws from her ethnographic work in Haiti to argue that the zonbi is at once part of the mystical arts that developed there since the colonial period, and comprises a form of mythmaking that represents, responds to, and mystifies the fear of slavery, collusion with it, and rebellion against it. In turn, some elements of the Haitian zonbi figure can be found in patterns that haunt recent American zombie films. Zombies in these films are read as figures in a parable about whiteness and death-dealing consumption. This essay suggests that the messianic mood surrounding the presidential candidacy of Barack Obama was consistent with a pattern in zombie films since the 1960s where many zombie-killing heroes are figured as black American males. Zombies are used in both ethno-graphic and film contexts to think through the conditions of embodiment, the boundaries between life and death, repression and freedom, and the racialized ways in which humans consume other humans.

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Mixed in America: Race, Religion, and Memoir (RELI 280, AFAN 282, or AMST 242)

Posted in Course Offerings, History, Identity Development/Psychology, Media Archive, Religion, United States on 2011-07-02 04:22Z by Steven

Mixed in America: Race, Religion, and Memoir (RELI 280, AFAN 282, or AMST 242)

Wesleyan University
Spring 2012

Elizabeth McAlister, Associate Professor of Religion

This course examines the history of “mixed-race” and “interfaith” identities in America. Using the genre of the memoir as a focusing lens, we will look at the various ways that Americans of mixed heritage have found a place, crafted an identity, and made meaning out of being considered “mixed.” How has being multiracial or bi-religious changed in the course of history in the United States? What has occasioned these changes, and what patterns can we observe? We will explore questions of racial construction; religious boundary-making; rites of passage, gender, sexuality and marriage; and some literary and media representations of mixed-heritage people.

For more information, click here.

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