Drake University’s Susan Glaspell Writers & Critics Series will host C. Wylie Lenz for a lecture, “The Evolving Zombie in Film and Fiction,” on Tuesday, March 31, at 6 p.m. The event will be held in the Cowles Library Reading Room, is free and open to the public, and will include refreshments.
Lenz will explore the history and evolution of the zombie in popular literature and cinema, with a specific focus on twenty-first-century fiction. The talk will include readings from his 2025 edited collection, The Post-Zombie: Essays on the Evolving Undead.
“The Susan Glaspell Writers & Critics Series has a long-standing tradition of bringing thinkers to Drake who challenge our perspectives on contemporary culture,” says Dina Smith, Associate Professor of English at Drake University. “We are delighted to continue our series with Dr. Lenz, whose scholarship reminds us that the zombie is a flexible metaphor. It helps us process our modern world—from social contagions to the breakdown of institutions—proving the undead remain a vital and unsettling presence in our cultural landscape.”
About C. Wylie Lenz
C. Wylie Lenz has been a contributor to “zombie studies” scholarship for more than fifteen years, since the academic field emerged in the first decade of the twenty-first century. He has authored or co-authored articles and essays on a wide range of zombie films and fiction, and he co-edited the anthologies Generation Zombie: Essay on the Living Dead in Modern Culture (2011), and The Post-Zombie: Essays on the Evolving Undead (2025). He is also editor of Poverty in American Popular Culture: Essays on Representations, Beliefs and Policy (2020). Lenz earned an MFA in creative writing and a PhD in English from the University of Florida, and he currently serves as an Associate Professor of English at Florida Polytechnic University, where he teaches courses in literature, the humanities, composition, and professional and technical writing.
About the Susan Glaspell Writers & Critics Series
Named for Pulitzer Prize-winning writer and Drake University alumna Susan Glaspell (Class of 1899), the Susan Glaspell Writers & Critics Series brings distinguished authors to campus to engage with students and the community. The Series’ objectives include giving students the chance to interact in meaningful and critical ways with writers and critics both in and out of the classroom. The series has previously hosted MacArthur “Genius” Grant recipients Ocean Vuong and Kiese Laymon, George Saunders and Alison Bechdel and celebrated authors and critics including Rachel Yoder, Marcie Rendon, Dr. Carolyn Finny and Dr. Devoney Looser.
To learn more about the event, visit drake.edu/english/susanglaspellwriterscriticsseries.