UC Irvine creates college course based on ‘The Walking Dead’
Carl Grimes (Chandler Riggs) and Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) – The Walking Dead – Season 3, Episode 16 – Photo Credit: Gene Page/AMC
I think it is safe to say that I have effectively seen everything. The University of California, Irvine announced an online course based on AMC’s hit series The Walking Dead.
The course will be titled ‘Society, Science, Survival: Lessons from AMC’s The Walking Dead’.
The course begins on Monday, October 14th, the day after the Season 4 premiere of the show, and runs through December 20th.
The course description from the class reads, “From understanding social identities to modeling the spread of disease, this eight-week course will span key science and survival themes using AMC’s The Walking Dead as its basis.”
Some of the topics they will be covering in this course include Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, social order and structures, social identity, roles, and stereotyping, the role of public health in society, nutrition in a post-apocalyptic world, managing stress in disaster situations, and more.
The eight-week course is free and available to the public around the world. It will be hosted through Instructure’s Canvas Network program.
Four instructors from the University will be brought in to lead this course; Dr. Joanne Christopherson, a lecturer in Social Sciences, Dr. Michael Dennin, Professor of Physics and Astronomy, Dr. Zuzana Bic, Lecturer in Public Health, and Dr. Sarah Eichhorn, Lecturer and Assistant Vice Chair for Undergraduate Studies in Mathematics.
Anyone wishing to enroll in class, or find out more information on the professors or the course itself can do so here.
While at first glance it may look like a cheap gimmick to bring people in, but after you get a chance to look deeper into the course descriptions and what they expect at the end of the course it actually seems like a very informative class that will engage students by using the show to relate to students on a different level.
At the very least, it should be interesting to see how the course is received.
AMC’s The Walking Dead Season 4 premieres on Sunday, October 13th at 9:00 p.m.