Chera Kee
Associate Professor, Film & Media Studies
Director of Graduate Studies
Room 10407, English Department, 5057 Woodward Ave (personal office)
Room 9407, English Department, 5057 Woodward Ave (DGS office)
Website(s)
internetghostcollective.wordpress.com/
Department
EnglishChera Kee
Research interest(s)/area of expertise
Film and Media Studies, Horror and the Gothic, Zombie media, Pop Culture, Storytelling and Adaptation, Fandom, Race, and Gender
Research
Dr. Kee's first book, Not Your Average Zombie: Re-Humanizing the Zombie from Voodoo to Zombie Walks (University of Texas Press, 2017) examines what she terms "extra-ordinary zombies" throughout U.S. media, claiming that these zombies--who can talk, love, and even dance--are far more prolific than one might believe. In fact, zombie media is full of very un-zombie-like zombies who resist and/or escape the objectification that zombiism would seem to imply.
Dr. Kee's second book, Corpse Crusaders: The Zombie in American Comics (University of Michigan Press, July 2024), is an exploration of the zombie in comic books, exploring the ways in which zombiism and superheroic conventions intersect in American comics. She argues that the zombie's early beginnings in action/adventure and superhero titles of the 1930s and '40s transformed the zombie in ways that are still apparent today and that shed light on the relative ease or difficulty some bodies face in becoming superheroic.
Dr. Kee has also written about Star Wars, fandom, and visual trickery in 19th century Spiritualist entertainments, and her upcoming work includes a project on the animated television show, Star Wars: The Clone Wars, as well as a monograph on fandom and intertextuality.
Education
- Ph.D., Critical Studies, School of Cinematic Arts, University of Southern California (2011)
- M.A., Critical Studies, School of Cinematic Arts, University of Southern California (2006)
- A.M., Regional Studies East Asia, Harvard University (2003)
Selected publications
Books
Corpse Crusaders: The Zombie in American Comics (University of Michigan Press, July 2024).
Not Your Average Zombie: Rehumanizing the Undead from Voodoo to Zombie Walks (University of Texas Press, September 2017).
Journal Articles, Essays, and Chapters
“Mirroring the 1980s in Contemporary Horror,” The Routledge Companion to History and the Moving Image, eds. Kim Nelson, Mia Treacey, and Marnie Hughes-Warrington (Routledge, 2023): 114-128.
“The Ghosts in the Machine: Screened Reality and the Desktop Film,” Lit: Literature Interpretation Theory, “Emerging Trends in Twenty-First-Century Horror” special issue, eds. Karen J. Renner and Dawn Keetley 33.2 (2022): 131-151.
“Beware the Zuvembies: Comics, Censorship, and the Ubiquity of Not-Quite Zombies,” Theorizing The Contemporary Zombie: Contextual Pasts, Presents, and Futures, eds. Scott Hamilton and Conor Heffernan (University of Wales Press, 2022): 179-196.
“No Grave Can Hold Them: Night of the Living Dead and the Rise and Rebirth of Zombies in Comics,” Beyond the Living Dead: Essays on the Romero Legacy, eds. Bruce Peabody and Gloria Pastorino, Contributions to Zombie Studies series (McFarland, 2021): 32-53.
“If You Leave, You’ll Have to Work for a Living: Economic Fantasies of the Dissident Undead,” Interdisciplinary Approaches to Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse (2017): https://ojs.uwindsor.ca/ojs/leddy/index.php/iasza/index.
“Poe Dameron Hurts So Prettily: How Fandom Negotiates with Transmedia Characterization,” NANO: New American Notes Online 12 (Dec. 2017): https://nanocrit.com/issues/issue12/Poe-Dameron-Hurts-So-Prettily-How- Fandom-Negotiates-with-Transmedia-Characterization.
"Good Girls Don't Date Dead Boys: Toying with Miscegenation in Zombie Films," The Journal of Popular Film and Television 42.4 (Dec. 2014): 176-185.
"Negotiated Seeing: Ghosts, Frauds, and the Empowered Spiritualist Spectator," The Spiritualist Movement: Speaking with the Dead in America and Around the World, vol. 3, ed. Christopher M. Moreman (ABC-CLIO, 2013): 207-224.
"They are Not Men...They are Dead Bodies!': From Cannibal to Zombie and Back Again," Better Off Dead: The Evolution of the Zombie as Post-Human, eds. Deborah Christie and Sarah Juliet Lauro (Fordham UP, 2011): 9-23.