On Wednesday, October 30, 2024, at 8:00 p.m., in Room 011 of the Ionian University (Old Psychiatric Hospital, Building of the Department of Audio and Visual Arts Secretariat), the doctoral thesis defense of Mr. Yorgos Drosos, PhD candidate of the Department of Audio and Visual Arts and a member of the Interactive Arts Lab, will take place. The thesis is titled "March of the Zombies: Aspects of the Monstrous in 21st century Audiovisual Fiction" supervised by Professor Dalila Honorato and committee members Tenured Assistant Professor Angeliki Malakasioti and Assistant Professor Maria Chalkou.
Summary
"The research at hand focuses on films and television and web series made between 2001 and 2023 that specialize in the zombie subgenre. Apart from a semiotic analysis of the material, the work draws on bibliography that pertains to philosophy, psychoanalysis and anthropology, on interviews with people that watch horror films and series and on an overview of the news stories and historical events from the period in question. The research sets out to detect the possible causes for the shift of interest towards the zombie subgenre and, at the same time, the changes in our perception of zombies and by extension, the monstrous in audiovisual fiction through the decades (from 1932 and the first cinematic zombie to the present day, when, apart from films, there are also TV and web series). How can the depiction of the monstrous be used as a projection or a symbolism of what we perceive as the repulsive Other? How does the concept of the monstrous itself change? How do the criteria by which something is defined as a monster? How do the conditions under which something transforms into a monster and how are these changes described in screenplays along the years? Are these conditions always associated to human activity or do they at times pertain to the supernatural or metaphysical? And, finally, how does the stance of "simple people" towards people and situations that they rightly or wrongly conceive as monstrous change along the years?"
Doctoral committee composition:
- Dalila Honorato, Supervisor, Professor, Department of Audio and Visual Arts, Ionian University
- Angeliki Malakasioti, Tenured Assistant Professor, Department of Audio and Visual Arts, Ionian University
- Maria Chalkou, Assistant Professor, Department of Audio and Visual Arts, Ionian University
- Iakovos Panagopoulos, Assistant Professor, Department of Audio and Visual Arts, Ionian University
- Andreas Giannakoulopoulos, Professor, Department of Audio and Visual Arts, Ionian University
- Agni Papadopoulou, Associate Professor, Department of Audio and Visual Arts, Ionian University
- Despina Poulou, Assistant Professor, Department of Cultural Technology and Communication, University of the Aegean.
The defense is public and open to all.
