A college course called “Zombies, Serial Killers, and Madmen" has become a hot elective for students, and philosopher Dr. Eric Smaw is pretty sure he knows why: students are fascinated by the grotesque and dangerous behavior of other human beings. This is a curiosity that is tied closely to their personal fears of vulnerability. Smaw teaches the course in three sections, starting on the topic of zombies and ending with the discussion of the criminally insane. Students enjoy talking about their favorite zombie narratives, so Smaw uses the archetype of the reanimated dead as a jumping off point for discussions of events that haunt or trouble Western history, such as the rise to power of tyrants like Hitler or Stalin.
“Students often want to use polite language to talk about the most grotesque things that happen in our society, but in order to get them to understand what can happen when a madman rises to power, it is important that they don’t use euphemisms to color what is grotesque behavior by politicians,” Smaw said.
One of Smaw's aims is to help students toward a deconstruction of their sense of American exceptionalism, an ideology he sees as damaging in that they expect to have to turn overseas for examples of genocide or megalomania while overlooking a history of Native American genocide and African slavery.
“America is not special," Smaw notes, "and the citizens of the state and the state itself are subject to all of the evils of humanity.” And so one of his primary goals is to help students recognize what could happen if Americans are not diligent in their application of the principles of democracy and the rule of law.
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