Using Zombies to Teach Collaborative Scholarship and Born‐Digital Publishing

Abstract

EDITOR'S SUMMARY Zombies have been sweeping across all types of media for many years, and their popularity continues to rise with TV shows like The Walking Dead and movies like Warm Bodies . The popularity of entertainment about the undead presents an interesting opportunity to draw parallels between the fiction of zombies and the reality of human politics, societies and issues. In an effort to connect this discourse with born‐digital publishing, [ZOMBIES REIMAGINED] was created. The effort behind [ZOMBIES REIMAGINED] was undertaken by faculty, students and librarians at Swarthmore College, and it was launched in May 2016 as a public website with individual exhibits in the form of web pages. The web pages were authored by students in the author's seminar and turned into an online experience with the help of Swarthmore librarians. Due to the success of the project, a large update to the site was launched in May 2017 with all new student authors and topics discussed.