Graduate Student, English Dept., UC Santa Cruz
Greg Pollock received his B.A. in English from James Madison University in 2006 and began working toward an M.A. in Literature at UC Santa Cruz in 2009. He studies non-paradigmatic life: zombies, animals, cannibals, commodities, objects, assemblages, monsters, and when they are strange, humans.
Greg tends to look at texts between the mid-nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries, not because there are fewer beastly critters outside of those parameters, but because he finds that period the most revealing in terms of the development of capitalism and modernization. Two forthcoming articles help explain why non-paradigmatic life is not just intriguing but important. One deals with late twentieth century zombie narratives (Dawn of the Dead and World War Z) as ways for thinking through the complexities of radical ecological adaptation. The other deals with how the categories “animal” and “cannibal” have become co-extensive with the normal, modern citizen, and how this helps us think about the ethics of consumption.
Greg lives in San Jose with his wife and two dogs.