Brendan Riley, associate professor of English at Columbia College Chicago, will be the featured speaker at 2 p.m. Thursday at Southwestern Michigan College’s Academic Lecture Seriesto be held in the Dale A. Lyons Building on the Dowagiac campus.

Riley will talk on “Why You Should Care about the Living Dead.” The zombie scholar often uses examples from zombie films, comics and literature to chart the history and philosophy of the walking dead.

Riley teaches writing, new media and cultural studies classes, as well as a course called “Zombies in Popular Media.” He earned his doctorate in English from the University of Florida, where he studied film and media studies as well as rhetoric and composition.

There are a limited number of seats available for the lecture, which is free and open to the public. Call (269) 782-1251 and leave your name, phone number and the number of seats needed.

The college’s next speaker in the lecture series is Richard Warner, speaking on “The End of the World as We Know It: Mayan Conceptions of Time and Space” at 2 p.m. Nov. 8.