FGSS 2620

Performing Death and Desire: Vampires on Stage and Screen

Course Description

Course information provided by the Courses of Study 2017-2018.

Why are the undead so long-lived? This course hunts the dangerous and subversive figure of the vampire across a variety of pages, stages and screens. From campy melodramas and raucous stage comedies, to lush cinematic epics and politically savvy television---and all the Draculas that have come and gone in between--we will explore how the vampire changes with medium, period, and genre. Using a variety of critical approaches we will consider why this most persistent cultural metaphor emerges in particular cultural moments, and what social anxieties and desires it articulates. We will interrogate the vampire's relationship to race and gender and analyze how the vampire is constructed, appropriated, adapted, reinvented, and performed in its many contexts, asking what it means for us to consume these texts.

View Enrollment Information