Skip to main content
Book cover

Queering the Family in The Walking Dead

  • Book
  • © 2018

Overview

  • Covers the first seven seasons of the television show and the first 144 issues of the comic book series
  • Addresses a lack of scholarship on The Walking Dead comics series, while expanding the remit of analyses of the television series
  • Produces a sustained, detailed analysis that will be of use to scholars and teachers of horror, gender, cultural, comics, and television studies

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this book

eBook USD 39.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Hardcover Book USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Other ways to access

Licence this eBook for your library

Institutional subscriptions

Table of contents (6 chapters)

  1. Living Families

  2. Living/Dead Families

Keywords

About this book

This book traces how The Walking Dead franchise narratively, visually, and rhetorically represents transgressions against heteronormativity and the nuclear family. The introduction argues that The Walking Dead reflects cultural anxiety over threats to the family. Chapter 1 examines the destructive competition created by heteronormativity, such as the conflict between Rick and Shane. Chapter 2 focuses on the actual or attempted participation of characters such as Carol and Negan in queer relationships. Chapter 3 interprets zombies as queer antagonists to heteronormativity, while Chapter 4 explores the incorporation of zombies into the lives of characters such as the Governor and the Whisperers. The conclusion asserts that The Walking Dead presents both queer alternatives to and damaging contradictions within the traditional heterosexual family model, helping to question this model and to consider the struggle of queer American families. Overall, this study holdsspecial interest for students and scholars of queerness, zombies, and the family.

Reviews

“Queering the Family in The Walking Dead is a useful text for people interested in queer theory and zombie studies. Zeigler has many solid arguments and observations throughout his text, and scholars would benefit from taking his arguments and applying them to other pop culture franchises to examine the way heteronormativity and the nuclear family is entrenched in the media alongside the denigration of queer and alternative family structures.” (Mary F. McGinnis, Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts, Vol. 32 (1), 2021)

Authors and Affiliations

  • English Department, Bronx Community College, CUNY, Bronx, NY, USA

    John R. Ziegler

About the author

John R. Ziegler is Assistant Professor of English at Bronx Community College, CUNY, USA. His research straddles the 16th–17th and 20th–21st centuries, and he has published on early modern English and Irish literature, ghosts, zombies, and video games. He also co-edits the journal Supernatural Studies and reviews theater for Culture Catch.

Bibliographic Information

Publish with us