This Is America

Pulitzer-winning novelist Daniel Kraus explores Night of the Living Dead’s impact on American culture—and on himself. (Images Courtesy of Daniel Kraus and Penguin Random House)

Daniel Kraus, MS ’06 IS, first watched Night of the Living Dead (1968) when he was five years old, and in the decades since has seen it more than 300 times. In Partially Devoured: How Night of the Living Dead Saved My Life and Changed the World (Counterpoint, 2026), Kraus puts all those viewings to good use, offering a cultural history/memoir that captures the film’s continued relevance and its huge impact on his life and career.

You write, “This film is America.” What do you mean by that? That’s hard to answer because that’s the whole book! I think it’s unique in the history of movies in that the popular opinion has always been that everyone has owned the film together because of its copyright issue. [Due to a copyrighting mistake, the production company didn’t own the rights to the movie after its release.] Everyone has been able to screen it and sell items that are inspired by it, and just work it into their lives in unique ways. And that has made the film particularly malleable for reflecting different people’s views of what this story means to an American audience.

In what ways do you think that it’s most relevant today? There are so many ways: to film history in general, independent film history, horror history, Black history. It’s relevant to the civil rights era, and it’s relevant to anti-war philosophies. It’s relevant in so many ways still today that I don’t know if there’s one way that has more primacy than the rest.

Discover the film’s relevance for yourself—join Kraus and Ross on Oct. 27 at Champaign’s Virginia Theatre for a screening of Night of the Living Dead, followed by a conversation about the film and a book signing. Details available at thevirginia.showare.com/eventperformances.asp?evt=1138.

Illinois Alumni, Fall 2026