A book about zombies, another about "fashioning masculinities" and one about "the history behind the California myth" — each is the subject of forthcoming programs sponsored by the Memorial Union bookstore and featuring the faculty members who worked on the books:

• Sarah Juliet Lauro, lecturer, Department of English — Better Off Dead: The Evolution of the Zombie as Post-Human, co-edited with Deborah Christie, assistant professor, Colorado Technical University, noon-1 p.m. Wednesday (Oct. 19), bookstore lounge. From the publisher’s website: “Where others have looked at the zombie as an allegory for humanity’s inner machinations or claimed the zombie as capitalist critique, this collection seeks to provide an archaeology of the zombie — tracing its lineage from Haiti, mapping its various cultural transformations, and suggesting the post-humanist direction in which the zombie is ultimately heading.”

• Tania Hammidi, lecturer, Women and Gender Studies — Judgement Day: Fashioning Masculinities, 1-2 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 9, Special Events Room (next to the post office). Hammidi is among the essayists in this book that features 24 portraits of queer masculinities by Los Angeles and New York based photographers Lola Flash, Love Ablan and Leon Mostovoy, accompanied by writings on stud-butch self-fashioning.

• Laurie Glover, lecturer, University Writing Program, and Victor Silverman, professor, Department of History, Pomona College —
California: On the Road Histories, noon-1 p.m. Monday, Nov. 14, bookstore lounge. From the publisher’s website: “California: On-the-Road Histories doesn’t relate the cleaned-up tale of the California dream that school textbooks and the tourism commission tell. Rather it presents the sometimes bitter, sometimes triumphant history behind the California myth.”