Steven Kirsh

After the Horde: Developing Resilience During the Zombie Post-Apocalypse

Abstract:

Imagine parenting in a post-apocalyptic environment littered with the corpses of the undead and the remnants of a society long gone. All of the pain, be it physical or psychological, and all of the slaughter, be it of the living or the dead, will exact a heavy toll on parents and those they love. The future of children, however, will now seem bright; or at the very least, better lit than during the Zombie Apocalypse. People will wonder how parents were able to survive the undead, while simultaneously raising a child when others were not so lucky on either account. Living alongside the living dead affected parents, changed their parenting, and transformed their children. Life as it once was will never again be. In order to claim a final victory over the dead, parents will need to look to the future with hope. Piece by piece, communities will then be able to puzzle the world back together. Today’s talk will focus on the role of resilience, at the level of the child, parent, family, and community, when attempting to rebuild the world among the diminishing shadows of the living dead.

Biography:

Steven J. Kirsh, Ph.D. is a professor of psychology at the State University of New York at Geneseo. Dr. Kirsh is the author of Parenting in the Zombie Apocalypse: The Psychology of Raising Children in a Time of Horror. He has also penned two academic books in the field of developmental media psychology and coauthored a third textbook on applied psychology.