Vampires

Just found this review at http://pelicanist.blogspot.de/2013/08/the-universal-vampire.html:

Another observation that caught my eye was that the start of popularising the vampire was, ironically enough, the Enlightenment. Leo Ruickbie gathers together what was, at that time, impressive testimony as to the actual existence of such creatures, from medical, legal and military sources. By way of a slight aside I love the Voltaire quote on p.75: “Nothing was spoken of but vampires, from 1730 to 1735“.

Here's the publisher's page: http://www.fdupress.org/book_descriptions/9781611475807.html.

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

Universal Vampire Update

Just heard from the editors that the forthcoming multi-volume blockbuster The Universal Vampire is scheduled for publication in April 2012. The publishers were 'very impressed with the quality of the essays in the collection'. A brief description of my chapter can be found here http://www.academia.edu/1536481/Evidence_for_the_Undead

'Vampire' Corpses Found In Bulgaria

Ancient 'Vampire' Bodies Found In Bulgaria

Bulgarian archaeologists have unearthed centuries-old skeletons with iron rods through their chests - believed to have been victims of an old anti-vampire ritual.

According to Bozhidar Dimitrov, head of the National History Museum in the Bulgarian capital Sofia, two skeletons from the Middle Ages have been discovered near the Black Sea town of Sozopol.

"These two skeletons stabbed with rods illustrate a practice which was common in some Bulgarian villages up until the first decade of the 20th century," said Mr Dimitrov.

Widespread superstition led to iron rods being hammered through the chest bones and hearts of those who did evil during their lifetimes for fear they would return after death to feast on the blood of the living.

Source:  http://news.sky.com/home/strange-news/article/16241948

Vampire burial to be displayed in National Museum of History in Sofia

Sozopol. The vampire burial unearthed in the seaside city of Sozopol will be displayed in the National Museum of History in Sofia due to the keen interest in Bulgaria and abroad, museum director Bozhidar Dimitrov told FOCUS News Agency.

The vampire will be displayed in about ten days when the special glass case in which it will be laid is ready.

Source:  http://www.focus-fen.net/index.php?id=n279942

'Vampire' graves may bring hordes to Bulgaria

The discovery of the graves of suspected vampires in Bulgaria may turn into a tourism gold mine, according to local news reports. [...] Headlines of the latest find have piqued interest in the U.S., Europe and Asia, the report said, and tour operators are fielding inquiries about what it called "vampire vacations."

Already, people were lining up at the excavation site at the monastery of St. Nicolas the Wonderworker, the Sofia News Agency reported.

Source:  http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2012/06/07/vampire-graves-may-bring-hordes-to-bulgaria/

 

Goth Tech Conference CFP

CFP: International Gothic Association Biennial Conference 2013

Gothic Technologies/Gothic Techniques Biennial Conference of the International Gothic Association
August 5 – 8, 2013
University of Surrey, United Kingdom

Confirmed Keynote Speakers: Professor Roger Luckhurst (Birkbeck College, University of London), Professor Fred Botting (Kingston University), other Keynotes TBA

Recent Gothic studies have foregrounded a plethora of technologies associated with Gothic literary and cultural production. Its presence is witnessed in how techno-science has contributed to the proliferation of the Gothic: the publishing and print culture disseminating Gothic texts, eighteenth-century architectural innovations, the on-line gaming and virtual Goth communities, the special effects of Gothic-horror cinema. One question raised by these new developments concerns the extent to which they generate new Gothic techniques. How does technology generate a new Gothic aesthetic? We are particularly interested in addressing how Gothic technologies have, in a general sense, produced and perpetuated ideologies and influenced the politics of cultural practice. However, we also want to reconsider the whole idea of what we mean by a Gothic ‘technique’ which arguably underpins these new formations of the Gothic. To that end we invite papers that question not only what we might constitute a Gothic aesthetic from the eighteenth century to the present day, but how that is witnessed in various forms such as the Female Gothic, models of the sublime, sensation fiction, cyberpunk as well as the various non-text based media that the Gothic has infiltrated. We also invite proposals which address how various critical theories help us to evaluate either these new technological trends or critically transform our understanding of the intellectual space occupied by earlier Gothic forms. Papers which explore the place of science, writing, and the subject are thus very welcome. We thus seek to explore how Gothic technologies/Gothic techniques textualize identities and construct communities within a complex network of power relations in local, national, transnational and global contexts. Papers exploring any aspect of Gothic technologies/Gothic techniques in writing, film and other media are welcome. Topics could include, but are not limited to, the following:

 • Gothic Architecture and Technology • Printing, Publishing and Gothic Disseminations • Terror, Terrorism, Technology • The techniques of philosophy – the sublime • Colonizing Technology and Postcolonial Gothics • Technology of Monsters • Gothic Art • Enlightenment Gothic and Science • War, Violence, Technology • (Neo)Victorian Gothic • Gothic poetry • Gothic Bodies: Modifications, Mutations, Transformations • Weird Science, Mad Scientists • Staging the Gothic • B-movies, Laughter and Comic Gothic • Demonic Technologies / Demonizing Technology • Theorising the Gothic • Gothic Geography – mapping the Gothic • Cloning, Duplicating, Doubling • Hybrids, Cyborgs and Transgression • Digital Gothics and Uncanny Media

Abstracts (350 words max.) for 20 minute papers may be submitted to IGA2013@surrey.ac.uk . The submission deadline is February 1, 2013. We also welcome submissions for panels (consisting of three papers) that address specific topics.

See: International Gothic Association

The International Gothic Association

Yes, there is an International Gothic Association! It's an academic society for the study of everything Gothic with a peer-reviewed journal Gothic Studies. According to their website:

The International Gothic Association unites teachers, scholars, students, artists, writers and performers from around the world who are interested in any aspect of gothic culture: fiction, drama, poetry, art, film, music, architecture, popular culture and technology. It promotes the study and dissemination of information on gothic culture from the mid eighteenth century to the contemporary moment. The only association of its kind, the IGA is the academic centre for people interested in an analysis of the gothic.

Vampire Autopsies

What happens when you cut open a vampire? Read this analysis of the 18th century vampire epidemic and the medical experts who examined the undead corpses in the Fortean Times, issue 288 (Special, 2012). Visit: Fortean Times

For back issues of Fortean Times call +44 (0)844 844 0049

Vampire Conference Great Success

'Vampires: Myths of the Past and the Future' at London University's Institute of Germanic and Romance Studies took us from the eastern European vampire epidemic of the 18th century right through to the monster's modern incarnations in Twilight, True Blood, and all the rest. Co-ordinator Simon Bacon brought together a diverse group of scholars from all of the world - even Romania - to discuss vampires past and present, and their multiple meanings and representations. Highlights were undoubtedly the first test screening of Revenant Noir and Sir Christopher Frayling's Coffin Trust (I kid ye not) lecture, but amongst the many other great talks, Michael Bell on 'American Vampires' and Jim Doan on blood rites are worth singling out. In all, 65 papers over three days. For all those who coulnd't make it, there are rumours of a possible publication.

Vampire Conference in The Herald

From The Herald newspaper:

Why we’ve fallen in love with 21st-century vampires

IT’S a topic most people would assume has too little bite for the attention of high-minded academics.

But several of Edinburgh University’s brightest social scientists will speak in London this week at a conference set up to discuss how vampires are portrayed in contemporary pop culture.

Hey, we're not all talking about pop culture! Come along and I'll tell you about the 18th century vampire epidemic...

See also Why We Love Vampires for more coverage.

Vampire Conference Programme

Vampires: Myths of the Past and the Future

An International Conference at the Institute of Germanic & Romance Studies, University of London

Wednesday, 2 November - Friday, 4 November 2011

Co-Ordinator: Simon Bacon (London)

Programme
Wednesday, 2 November 2011

9.15 Registration

10.00 Simon Bacon (London): Welcome and Introduction

10.15 Plenary Session:
Ken Gelder (Melbourne): 'Our Vampires, Our Neighbours'

11.05 Coffee

11.30 Parallel Session 1a: Memories of Vampires Past (Chair: Sharon Payka)
Leo Ruickbie (UK): 'Vampire Autopsy: Evidence for the Undead'
Ingrida Slepavicute (Kaunas): 'Vampires in Lithuanian Mythology: from Traditional Legends until Netlore of Children'
Michael E. Bell (McKinney, TX): 'American Vampires and the Ongoing Ambiguity of Death'

11.30 Parallel Session 1b: Vampires of the Future (Chair: Alannah A. Hernandez)
Aline Ferreira (Aviero): 'Future Vampires: the Genetically Modified in Octavia Butlers Fledgling'
Stephania Kovbasiuk (Kiev): 'Dracula of the 21st Century: an Intellectual and a Thinker'
Cheyenne Mathews (USA): 'Lightening "The White Man's Burden": Evolution of the Vampire from the Victorian Racialism of Dracula to the New World Order of I am a Legend'

13.00 Lunch (own arrangements)

14.15 Parallel Session 2a: Images of the Vampire I (Chair: Hannah Priest)
Marco Grosoli (Italy): 'The Fearless Vampire Palgiarism: Park Chan-Wook's Thirst'
Victoria Williams (UK): 'Reflecting Dracula: the Undead in Alfred Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt'
Angela Tumini (Chapman, CA): 'Vampresse: Embodiment of Sensuality and Erotic Horror in Carl Dreyer's Vampyr and Mario Bava's The Mask of Satan'

14.15 Parallel Session 2b: Vampire Transgression (Chair: Ken Hollings)
Stephanie Badziong (Cologne): 'Religious Vampirism: the Elimination of the Church in Perfect Creature'
Judith Schossbock (Vienna): 'Dreading the Normative: the Vampire in the Queer Horror Genre'
Hadas Elber (Tel Aviv): 'Dracula meets Darwin': Contemporary Science Fiction's Demystification of the Vampire'

15.45 Tea

16.15 Parallel Session 3a: Memories of the New World (Chair: Rikke Schubart)
Enrique Ajura Ibarra (Lancaster): 'Vampire Science: the Myths of Dracula and Frankenstein in Medxican Horror Cinema'
Alannah A. Hernandez (Chicago, IL): 'Vampire Migrations: the Long and Winding Road Leading from the Old World to the New'
Ines Ordiz Alonso-Collada (Léon): 'Vampires in Globalized Culture: the Narrative of Adrianna Diaz Encisco'

16.15 Parallel Session 3b: All that Glitters I (Chair: Angela Tumini)
Reni Eddo-Lodge (Preston): 'The Anti-Feminist Character of Bella Swan: Why the Twilight Saga is Regressive'
Karin Hirmer (Regensburg): Female Empowerment: Buffy and her Heiresses in Control'
Thuc Doan Nguyen (Fullerton, CA): 'Of "Cougars" and "Kittens": Vampire Visual Rhetoric in the Last Three Decades'

17.45 Plenary Session: Remembrance of a Symphony of Terror: Film and Performance (Chair: Clemens Ruthner)
Clemens Ruthner (Dublin): 'Introduction to Anglo-German Vampires'
Mark Ferelli (UK): 'Performance: Magic Lantern Performance, "For the Love of Alfred Reginald Natzinck"'
Hannes König (Lind): 'Performance: Revenant Noir: 30-minute Black and White Film with Music (World Premiere/Test Screening)'

19.15 Sessions end

Thursday, 3 November 2011

9.30 Plenary Session:
Milly Williamson (London): title to be announced

10.20 Coffee

10.45 Parallel Session 4a: 'Fangdom' and Popular Memory (Chair: Sorcha Ni Fhlainn)
Maria Mellins (London): 'Fangtasia London: The True Blood Franchise and Vampire Lifestyle'
Malin Isaksson (Umea): 'Traces of Carmilla in Femslash Fan Fiction: Contemporary Female Vampires and their Possible Futures'
Rosemary Candelario (Los Angeles, CA): '"I want to be the one": Vampires and Virgins in Popular Culture'

10.45 Parallel Session 4b: All that Glitters II (Chair: Nadine Farghaly)
Nancy Schumann (UK): 'Women with Bite: Tracing Vampire Women from Lilith to Twilight'
Christine Feichtinger (Graz): 'The Vampiric Body of Plenitude: Reflections on the Role of the Body in Stephanie Mayer's Twilight Series'
Batia Stolar (Ontario): The Gender Politics of Reproduction in the Twilight Series'

12.15 Lunch (own arrangements)

13.30 Parallel Session 5a: 'Our Vampires, Ourselves' (Chair: Maurizio Cinquegrani)
Catherine Strong (Wagga Wagga, NSW): 'Vampire as Celebrity, Celebrity as Vampire': the Uncertain Boundary between Reality and Myth in the Twilight Franchise'
Nadine Farghaly (Salzburg): 'Vamp No More: When Bloodsucking Friends Just Aren't Enough'
Ivan Phillips (Hatfield): 'The Vampire with a Tousand Faces': Towards a Physiognomy of the Undead'

13.30 Parallel Session 5b: All that Glitters III (Chair: Malin Isaksson)
Celia Jameson (London): 'Edward Cullen is a controlling and abusive boyfriend': Twilight and the Discourse of Control and Coercion in Heterosexual Relationships'
Katharina Rein (Germany): 'Father, Brother, Child: the Posy-Familial Vampire Society in True Blood'
Maria Lindgren Leavenworth (Umea): '" I wanna do bad things with you": Fear and Desire in The Southern Vampire Mysteries and True Blood'

15.00 Parallel Session 6a: Mis-Un-Dead (Chair: Ivan Phillips)
Catherine Wynne (Hull): 'Notions of the Home in I am Legend and its Adaptations'
Maurizio Cinquegrani (London): '"Spectral Wanderers of Unholy Night": the Vampire and the Cinematic City'
Raul Rodriguez-Hernandez and Claudia Schäfer (Rochester, NY): 'Sublime Horror: Transparency, Melodrama and the "Mise-en-scène" of Three Mexican Vampire Films'

15.00 Parallel Session 6b: Vampires of the Future II (Chair: Bernhard Unterholzner)
Kristin Burnett and Judith Leggatt (Ontario): 'Bloodsucking Colonizers and the Undead Anishinaabe in Drew Hayden's The Night Wanderer'
Karma Waltonen (Davis, CA): 'Octavia Butler's Fledgling: Postmodern Revisioning of the Vampire'
Georgina Colby (London): Political Bloodsuckers: Neoliberal/Neoimperial Vampires in Bret Easton Ellis's The Informers and Imperial Bedrooms'

16.30 Tea

16.50 Parallel Session 7a: Memories of Vampires Past II (Chair: Grainne O'Brien)
Hannah Priest (Manchester): 'Vampirs in those Days: Interrogating Master Narratives'
James Doan (Fort Lauderdale, FL): "For the blood is the life": Myths and Rituals of Vampirism in Southwest and Plains Indian Cultures'
Achamma Alex (Chengannur): 'Vampire Myths: Offering Resistance to the Dominant Culture'

16.50 Parallel Session 7b: Images of the Vampire II (Chair: Katharina Rein)
Denis Liboni (Iasi): 'Dracula between Myths and Reality, Universe and Homeland'
Yakut Oktay (Istanbul): 'Vampire as the Victorian Aesthete: Coppola's Bram Stoker's Dracula'
Sharon Payka and Jane Nickerson (Washington, DC): 'Developing a Course with Bite'

Coffin Trust Lecture

18.20 Reception
18.50 Sir Christopher Frayling (Cambridge): 'The Nighmare of Bram Stoker'

Sponsored by the John Coffin Trust of the University of London

Friday, 4 November 2011


9.30 Plenary Session:
Stacey Abbott (London): 'How to Survive a Vampire Apocalypse, or What to Do when the Vampires are Us'

10.20 Coffee

10.45 Parallel Session 8a: Memories of a Forever Youth (Chair: Simon Bacon)
Kelly Doyle (Okanagan, BC): 'Childish Monsters, Monstrous Children: Boundary, Transgression, Posthumanism, and the Child as Monster in Tomas Alfredson's Let the Right One In'
Allison Moore (Birmingham): '"I'm twelve, but I've been twelve for a long time": Representations of Childhood in Let the Right One In'
Rikke Schaubart (Denmark): '"Be me for a little while": Border-Crossing and Vampire Pedagogy in Let the Right One In (2008)'

10.45 Parallel Session 8b: Theory of the Undead I (Chair: Judith Schossbock)
Christine Knight (Edinburgh): 'Synthetic Blood and Vegetarian Vampires: the Ethics of Consumption in 21st-Century Vampire Texts'
Odelia Barkin (Jerusalem): 'Current American TV Vampires and Trauma'
Hannes König (Lind): 'Vampire in the Mirror: the Psychoanalysis of Immortal Narcissism'

12.15 Lunch (own arrangements)

13.15 Plenary Session:
Catherine Spooner (Lancaster): '"Dressed in a silken robe of white": Fashioning the Vampire from Page to Screen'

14.15 Parallel Session 9a: Vampire Evolution (Chair: Aline Ferreira)
Karin Preuss (Germany): 'Subversive Aesthetics of Transgression: Vampires in Literature and Film'
Naomi Segal (London): André Gide, Nosferatu and the Hydraulics of Youth and Age'
Karen Leeder (Oxford): '"The empty looking glass": Metamorphosis of the Vampire in Heiner Müller'

14.15 Parallel Session 9b: Vampires in Popular Memory (Chair: Allison Moore)
Erika Grendelova (Prague): 'Vampires in Comics: Transformation of the Myth as Represented in 30 Days of Night'
Burcu Genc (Istanbul): 'The Vampire from an Evolutionary Perspective in the Japanese Animation Blood +'
Grainne O'Brien (Limerick): 'Where's the Blood? Marginalised or Trivialised? Vampires in the Harry Potter Series'

15.45 Tea

16.10 Parallel Session 10a: Theory of the Undead II (Chair: Hadas Elber)
Marius Crisan (Timisoara): 'Vampires and Stereotypes: Post-Stoker Imagined Transylvania'
Sarah Horgan (Canterbury): 'The Anglo-Irish Vampire: Constructions of a Conflicted National Identity in the 19th-Century Gothic Text'
Bernhard Unterholzner (Gießen): 'Tracing Translation: Vampires, Media, Enlightenment'

16.10 Parallel Session 10b: Mis-Un-Dead II (Chair: Cheyenne Matthews)
Ken Hollings (London): 'Gothic Machines'
Sorcha Ni Fhlainn (Dublin): '"Old things, fine things": of Vampires, Antique Dealers, and Timelessness'
Isabella van Elfren (Utrecht): 'Music that Sucks and Bloody Liturgy: Catholicism in Vampire Movies'

17.40 Closing Discussion

17.55 Conference ends

Further details and registration
To obtain further information and register for the conference, contact Christopher Barenberg (tel: 020 7862 8738). Please note the closing date for receipt of registrations is Friday, 21 October 2011.

From http://igrs.sas.ac.uk/events/conferences-workshops/vampires-myths-of-the-past-and-future.html

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.