Universal Vampire Book Project

Here's a description of the project from the editors:

The Universal Vampire Series, 2 Vols. 

Vol. 1 – The Universal Vampire: Origins and Evolution of a Legend 

Vol. 2 – The Hip and the Atavistic: Images of the Modern Vampire

Editors 

Barbara Brodman, Nova Southeastern University 

James E. Doan, Nova Southeastern University

Project Overview 

For almost 200 years, since the publication of John Polidori’s The Vampyre (1819), the vampire has been a mainstay of Western culture, appearing consistently in literature, art, music (notably opera), film, television, graphic novels and popular culture in general. Even before its entrance into the realm of arts and letters in the early 19th century, the vampire was a feared creature of Eastern European folklore and legend, rising from the grave at night to consume its living loved ones and neighbors, often converting them at the same time into fellow vampires. A major question exists within vampire scholarship: to what extent is this creature a product of European cultural forms, or is the vampire indeed a universal, perhaps even archetypal figure? 

In Volume I, Part 1 of the collection, “Origins of a Legend: Early Mythic Images of the Vampire,” we hope to shed light on this question. By tracing the development of the early Norse draugr figure into later European lore, we may see the underpinnings of Dracula who, of course, first appears as a vampire in Anglo-Irish Bram Stoker’s novel, Dracula, published in 1897. The Romantic vampire, upon which we focus in Part 2 of this volume of the collection, first coalesced around the figure of Lord Byron and his associates in the early 1800s; but what were its earlier sources? Could these have included the legendary Spanish “lady-killer,” Don Juan? And did they constitute resistance to the dominant culture of the time? As several of the essays in this collection deal with these literary connections, others will move outside Europe to explore vampire figures in Native American and Mesoamerican myth and ritual and the existence of similar or identical vampiric traditions in Asian and other non-European settings. 

Volume I, Part II, “A Tradition Takes Form: The Imprint of the Romantic Vampire,” will focus on various aspects of the classic Dracula of Bram Stoker, including the author’s use of colonized language and colonial discourse and manifestations of the Stoker image in film, literature and lore around the world. This set of essays will also examine from various perspectives the relations between other hallmark works of 19th-century vampire literature, such as J. Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla, and modern films, including Interview with the Vampire and Let the Right One In. 

Volume II of the Universal Vampire Series, The Hip and the Atavistic: Images of the Modern Vampire, will be an eclectic mélange of essays, including a discussion of evolution and atavism in the vampire film, The Wisdom of Crocodiles (1998); critical pieces that examine the modern Asian vampire, on stage, in graphic novels and in film; images of the Vampire in contemporary Japan (where, according to its author, vampires should be “beautiful”); an analysis of the vampire in popular Russian culture; and the obligatory studies of vampires in The Twilight Saga and the True Blood series. Each volume in the collection will contain 15 original, thought-provoking essays, chosen to both augment and challenge the classical vampire corpus and examine the evolutionary path the legend has taken in modern arts and letters. 

Audience 

The book is intended for an informed popular audience interested in the vampire legend and its manifestations in literature, film, visual arts and popular culture. Given the popularity of the vampire and the almost insane pace at which authors, artists and film makers strive to present newer and more innovative takes on the legend, we anticipate that the book will appeal to a broad readership throughout the English-speaking world. With the growing number of academic conferences that focus on the theme of the vampire, and the proliferation of courses dealing with the vampire legend in colleges and universities, we are confident that a large academic audience exists as well.

Source: h-net

Wanted: Old Gods

Preternature Volume 3:2. Old Gods and Ancient Ones [Call for Papers]

Call them pagan or ancient, earth-based or demonic, or by names like Hekate, Isis, Poseidon, Ereshkigal, Loki, and Anath, the Old Gods have been topics of energetic scholarly discussion, literary recreation, and artistic depiction for decades. As supplanted as they might seem to historians, the Old Gods live on and capture our imagination. Contextualized in archaeological study, sensationalized by filmmakers, and rendered in new costumes and flesh by artists, Old Gods continue, components of the flexible mythologies that make up shared cultural references. They are used across literature, graphic novels, television series, cinema, and MMORPGs to tell and enact narratives. As they had in ancient landscapes, the Old Gods now make up part of a dynamic belief systems and figure in new forms of ritual invocations.

This issue of Preternature especially welcomes scholars whose work focuses on the new uses of ancient Asian, Babylonian, Canaanite, Egyptian, Greek, Mesoamerican, Norse, and Slavic Gods. It also welcomes contributions, from any discipline, that highlight the cultural, literary, dramatic, religious, magical, or historical significance of any of the ancient gods in their own contexts, as a part of "paganisms," and as a part of contemporary popular cultures. We welcome synthetic overviews of Sarapis veneration in Ephesus or the cult of Mithras as much as feminist critiques of representations of goddesses in graphic novels. Analyses of new ritualizations of Old Gods in specific neopaganism groups are welcome as well. Ultimately, we are interested in how the ancient gods are maintained, in various media and in scholarly discussion, in this modern era.

Contributions should be roughly 8,000 - 12,000 words, including all documentation and critical apparatus, and adhere to the Chicago Manual of Style, 15th edition (style 1, employing endnotes). Contributions must be submitted through the Preternature CMS. Final submissions are due March 31, 2013.

Queries about journal scope and submissions can be made to the Editor, Dr. Kirsten C. Uszkalo. Queries concerning books to be reviewed can be made to the Book Reviews Editor, Dr. Richard Raiswell.

Preternature is a bi-annual publication, published through Penn State Press, and available in print or electronically through JSTOR, Project Muse, and as a Kindle e-book.

See  http://preternature.org/index.php/PN/announcement/view/8

Christmas or Yule? Pagan secrets of the festive season

It's that time of year again. Behind display windows sprayed with fake snow, stores play all our Christmas favorites, endlessly, and bearded men in red suits loiter in grottoes. But as you order your tree and hang up mistletoe, have you ever wondered what any of this has got to do with Christmas?

Read my full story on the real meaning of Christmas in The Sierra Sun, published Thursday, December 15, 2011.

Vampire Conference Paper Accepted

'Vampires: Myths of the Past and the Future' - An interdisciplinary conference organised by Simon Bacon, The London Consortium in collaboration with the Centre for the Study of Cultural Memory, Institute of Germanic & Romance Studies, University of London

From the conference description:

Myths of vampires and the undead are as old as civilisation itself, wherever humans gather these ‘dark reflections’ are sure to follow. Whether as hungry spirits, avenging furies or as the disgruntled dearly departed, they have been used to signify the monstrous other and the consequences of social transgression. Embodying the result of a life lived beyond patriarchal protective proscription that quickly changes from dream to nightmare and from fairy tale to ghost story.

Sir Christopher Frayling, Dr Stacey Abbott, Dr Catherine Spooner and Dr Milly Williamson will be giving papers, and there'll also be the world premiere of a short film on vampires.

I'll be presenting a paper on the 18th century vampire epidemic and its consequences.

See the website for more details on the full programme http://igrs.sas.ac.uk/events/conferences-workshops/vampires.html
And put 2-4 November 2011 in your calendars.