{"id":17605,"date":"2014-04-03T16:00:31","date_gmt":"2014-04-03T21:00:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/?p=17605"},"modified":"2014-04-03T15:09:27","modified_gmt":"2014-04-03T20:09:27","slug":"new-apsu-spanish-class-tackles-vampires-and-zombies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/2014\/04\/03\/new-apsu-spanish-class-tackles-vampires-and-zombies\/","title":{"rendered":"New APSU Spanish class tackles vampires and zombies"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"AustinClarksville, TN<\/strong> – The last few years have been rough for Spain. The unemployment rate is close to 30 percent, which has led to daily protests and civil unrest in that European nation. For some scholars, this turmoil helps explain the sudden popularity of vampire and zombie literature in that country.<\/p>\n

\u201cSpain is in shambles,\u201d Dr. Osvaldo Di Paolo, Austin Peay State University associate professor of Spanish, said. \u201cFrom 2008, the world crisis has hit them hard. When you read a novel from Spain about a zombie apocalypse, it makes you feel like this is happening. You feel the same destruction of society in every aspect.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"APSU<\/a>

APSU associate professor Dr. Osvaldo Di Paolo.<\/p><\/div>\n

The idea of using genre fiction as a window into another culture intrigued Di Paolo, prompting him to create a new special topics Spanish literature class this semester that focuses on vampires, zombies and hard-boiled detectives.<\/p>\n

\u201cI want these students to look at these cultural products and ask, \u2018what does it mean? Why does it exist?\u2019\u201d Di Paolo said. \u201cBasically, young students like this sort of stuff, but they don\u2019t read it in the depth it can be read.\u201d<\/p>\n

The students in Di Paolo\u2019s SPAN 4100 class are reading Spanish language genre works from Spain, Costa Rica and Argentina this semester, giving them an understanding of modern life in those countries that they wouldn\u2019t necessarily get from reading classic\u2019s such as Cervantes\u2019 masterpiece, \u201cDon Quixote.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI like horror films and zombie films; I\u2019m a fan of horror and comic books,\u201d APSU student Carlos Chavez said. \u201cI thought I\u2019d like to see what they\u2019re doing with it in Hispanic culture, and it kind of opened my mind.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is the first Spanish book I\u2019ve read,\u201d APSU student Amber Bowens said. \u201cIt\u2019s the first time I\u2019ve seen a Hispanic take on supernatural creatures. The humans in this book are more monsters than the monsters are.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThere seemed to be a clear-cut, black and white good and bad in the older literature,\u201d APSU student Nathaniel Fox said. \u201cHere it\u2019s kind of blurred. It\u2019s a gray area, which is what life is all about.\u201d<\/p>\n

Several major universities across the country also are using elements of pop culture as a means of engaging students. Recently, Michigan State University offered a summer course titled \u201cSurviving the Coming Zombie Apocalypse: Catastrophes and Human Behavior.\u201d National Public Radio reported that St. Edward\u2019s University in Austin, Texas, required its freshmen to read Max Brook\u2019s zombie novel \u201cWorld War Z\u201d to \u201cfacilitate conversations about globalization, ethics and mortality.\u201d<\/p>\n

The idea of mingling pop culture with academia also isn\u2019t that new at APSU. Di Paolo recently co-wrote a book, \u201cNegr\u00f3tico,\u201d with Dr. Nadina Olmedo, assistant professor at the University of San Francisco, that deals with the fusion of gothic and detective fiction through the images of vampires, zombies and monsters in Hispanic literature and film. The book will be published this fall.<\/p>\n

[320left]Dr. Amy Thompson, APSU associate professor of biology, and Dr. Antonio Thompson, APSU associate professor of history, also have co-edited a new book, set to come out this spring, titled \u201cThe Real World Implications of a Zombie Apocalypse.\u201d The book will feature essays by the Thompsons and Dr. David Steele, chair of the APSU Department of Sociology, and Dr. James Thompson, APSU biology professor.<\/p>\n

For Di Paolo, these genre books provide a better way to demonstrate how factors such as globalization are affecting Hispanic countries. One aspect, as reflected in this new literature, is the increase in violence.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt portrays what\u2019s going on in society,\u201d he said. \u201cWhat we can see now is this type of literature shows a more violent society. The increasing violence is all due to the flaw of globalization. It has separated the rich and the poor more than ever.\u201d<\/p>\n

For more information on this new class, contact Di Paolo at dipaoloo@apsu.edu<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Clarksville, TN – The last few years have been rough for Spain. The unemployment rate is close to 30 percent, which has led to daily protests and civil unrest in that European nation. For some scholars, this turmoil helps explain the sudden popularity of vampire and zombie literature in that country. \u201cSpain is in shambles,\u201d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5],"tags":[22460,17473,5689,23,12618,9764,262,8168,22459,512,825,10195,17486,22458,17485,17487,22462,11996,22461,21859,21860,10581,9794,7380,22463,19405,22464,22457,17488,17471],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4xGYI-4zX","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17605"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17605"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17605\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17606,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17605\/revisions\/17606"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17605"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17605"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17605"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}