A THIRD-LEVEL INSTITUTION in the US has added zombie studies to its course programme for a degree in pop culture, the Baltimore Sun reports.

Baltimore University’s decision to provide the course through its English department is the latest move in a recent literary craze for zombies.

Jane Austen classic Pride and Prejudice was re-worked and re-released last year as Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. In this alternative version, zombies are loosed upon the English countryside and the Bennet girls must defend themselves – and their love interests – from attack.

Austen is credited as a co-author.

Baltimore lecturer Arnold Blumberg explained the importance of zombies to his students, saying: “Zombies are one of the most potent, direct reflections of what we’re thinking moment to moment in our culture.”

The course curriculum includes 16 zombie films, a number of zombie comics and the opportunity to present a script or storyboards in lieu of a final research paper.

Chairman of Baltimore’s school of communications design Jonathan Shorr gave the zombie course the go-ahead, saying that it’s a roundabout way of getting students to study literature:

They think they’re taking this wacko zombie course, and they are. But on the way, they learn how literature and mass media work, and how they come to reflect our times.