I should have expected this, but I think I was in denial.

[hermionesviolin]

The syllabus for the Vampire class I'm auditing this semester is up:

Required Texts (available at the Harvard Coop later in the summer):

THREE VAMPIRE TALES, ed. Anne Williams (Wadsworth, Cengage Learning): ISBN-13: 978-0-618-08490-6. This volume includes John Polidori’s The Vampyre, Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla, and Bram Stoker’s Dracula, with other helpful resources. ***Although other editions of these works exist, you must use this edition or you will be at a disadvantage.***

Rachel Caine, THE MORGANVILLE VAMPIRES (New American Library): ISBN 978-0-451- 23054-6. This volume contains the first two novels in the series, Glass Houses and The Dead Girls’ Dance. Only Glass Houses will be assigned.

Seth Grahame-Smith, ABRAHAM LINCOLN: VAMPIRE HUNTER (Grand Central Publ./Hachette): ISBN 978-0-446-56308-6

Laurell K. Hamilton, GUILTY PLEASURES (Jove/Penguin): ISBN 978-0-515-13449-0

Charlaine Harris, DEAD UNTIL DARK (Ace/Penguin): ISBN 978-0-441-01699-0

Kim Harrison, DEAD WITCH WALKING (Eos/Harper Collins): ISBN 978-0-06-156719-3

Tom Holland, LORD OF THE DEAD (Pocket Books): ISBN 0-671-53425-4

Elizabeth Kostova, THE HISTORIAN (Time Warner Books): ISBN 0-7515-3728-4

John Ajvide Lindqvist, LET THE RIGHT ONE IN (Thomas Dunne Books, St. Martin's Griffin): ISBN-13: 978-0-312-35529-6

Stephenie Meyer, TWILIGHT (Little Brown): ISBN-13: 978-0316038379

Anne Rice, INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE (Ballantine Books): ISBN 0-345-40964-7

Comments

[lunabee34.livejournal.com]

THIS IS GOING TO BE SO FUN ZOMG!!!!!!

(And now, if I get to make my special topics vampire class, I have a heads up on a good edition of Carmilla LOL)

[hermionesviolin.livejournal.com]

I've been meaning to read Carmilla since some of my friends took a Victorian Porn Sexuality class in college. (I think I must have had a scheduling conflict, because I remember telling them I needed to steal their syllabus.)

I should have expected this, but I think I was in denial.

[athene.livejournal.com]

I think I read that in my Gothic lit class. Still not convinced she's a vamp, pretty sure she's a witch.

[lunabee34.livejournal.com]

I have sadly never read it which is something I intend to rectify soon.

[polymexina.livejournal.com]

Huh. No feminist takes on vampires? My bored face is bored.

[hermionesviolin.livejournal.com]

My sense is that the gist of the class is, "Vampires: why so (enduringly) popular?"

Which, obviously, doesn't preclude feminist takes (and admittedly this portion of the syllabus doesn't include the optional critical essays and films).

Which works would you have added?

[polymexina.livejournal.com]

The Gilda Stories for sure.

A novel whose title I'm blanking on but was writting in 81 or 82 that's narrated by an unrepentant vampiress who manages a dance studio.

Mina by Marie Kiraly

The Mind of My Mind series by Octavia Butler (psychic vampire feeds on black people in the US and breeds them to make their psyches extra delicious)

Fledgling (also by Octavia Butler)

When True Night Falls

The Madness Season

[hermionesviolin.livejournal.com]

I give myself brownie points that I've read Mina and Fledgling :)

The psychic vampire thing is interesting -- I have Butler's Patternist series on my To Read list, but hadn't thought of them as vampire books.

My google-fu is failing me for finding the dance studio book :(

[polymexina.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I JUUUUUST returned it to the library, too, so it's not obvious. It's a dang-gone classic, though.

It's something like I, Vampyr? This is going to drive me crazy.

[polymexina.livejournal.com]

Daughters of Darkness focuses on lesbian vampires.

[hermionesviolin.livejournal.com]

Heh, as I was going through my "vampires" tag on my GoodReads earlier today (adding the books you'd listed), I was reminded that I actually have a "lesbian vampires" tag (who knew?).

[polymexina.livejournal.com]

I'm also not seeing any authors of color -- like, where's LA Banks? She's published over 10 books in her vampire huntress series.

[polymexina.livejournal.com]

If we're thinking POC, then the Felix Gomez investigator series -- featuring a Latino vet with some PTSD who was turned while deployed to Iraq.

I should have expected this, but I think I was in denial.

[athene.livejournal.com]

The Gilda Stories (I'm pretty sure that's the name of the
book).

[polymexina.livejournal.com]

Speaking of LGBT issues, where the shit is Tanya Huff? Her series Blood Ties was a TV series.

[polymexina.livejournal.com]

And while Twilight's very popular, LJ Smith's Vampire Diaries is a longer running series in book form, as is her Night World series.

This syllabus annoys me.

[hermionesviolin.livejournal.com]

Yeah, after I'd commented to you about the course being mostly about the enduring popularity of the vampire mythos, I was looking back at the syllabus and thought, "I have never heard of this Tom Holland dude, and I'm not sure I've heard of Kim Harrison or Rachel Caine." (I have heard of the Blue Bloods books, though -- Gossip Girl with vampires. Which also aren't on the syllabus.)

I am assuming that (an episode each of) Blood Ties and Vampire Diaries will show up as optional post-class films ... though maybe not, since she says, "A number of films will be viewed after class, featuring the work of directors such as" and proceeds to list 9 directors, and there are only so many weeks in the term. She lists various vampire TV series (though not Being Human) in her opening paragraph about the fact that vampires are everywhere in pop culture, but it's unclear how she plans to incorporate that into her discussion.

I'd been feeling sort of like, "Hers isn't the syllabus I would make for a vampire class, but she's not trying to do the same thing with her course as I would be were I creating one" -- but her syllabus does say, "In addition to their expected place in the horror genre, vampire stories have been used as "code" to address a host of provocative topics, including sexuality, death, gender, the disabled body, HIV-AIDS, addiction, adolescence, immigration, colonialism, and religious doubt," so she really should at least be cognizant of the various different kinds of narratives she could be including in this syllabus.

Reading the rest of the text of the syllabus (I'd just skimmed it before -- skipping to the list of texts), I feel like she's coming from a more defensive mode than I would be. She says (in an article on Twilight -- and yeah, her discussion of Twilight therein does not inspire me) she's long been a fan of vampire films but had never been a reader of YA lit, and I get the sense from her syllabus that she's still in defensive mode from people's reactions to her Twilight fannishness. Whereas I just take as foundational that vampires are compelling, and in constructing a course would be more inclined to do an evolution of vampire stories -- discussing how different people have reworked this trope for different purposes (I'm thinking of Nina Auerbach's Our Vampires Ourselves, which I still haven't read, actually).

[polymexina.livejournal.com]

Hows the course going?

[hedy.livejournal.com]

(Has read all four Twilight books and is only ashamed of Breaking Dawn.)
Doesn't Stephanie Meyer's husband work at HBS?

[hermionesviolin.livejournal.com]

> Doesn't Stephanie Meyer's husband work at HBS?

Wikipedia says he used to work as an auditor but has now retired (I feel like I should put that in scare-quotes, since he's all of 37 years old, and has been "retired" for at least 2 years) to look after the kids.

[viciouswishes.livejournal.com]

Do you know that SMeyer is the second highest paid living author? The only one who makes more money than her is James Patterson.

Everything else, I'd totally be into reading. I loved the Let the Right One In movie and really need to find the book.

[hermionesviolin.livejournal.com]

> Do you know that SMeyer is the second highest paid living author? The only one who makes more money than her is James Patterson.

I read that somewhere recently, actually. And apparently JP also has a host of co-authors -- dunno how that plays into the "highest paid" calculation.

After I got the syllabus I posted to facebook, "Elizabeth realized that taking "The Vampire in Literature and Film" this fall means she'll have to actually read _Twilight_ (though okay, I'm auditing the class, so technically I don't HAVE to)."

Everything else I don't have a problem with reading -- though I'm not thrilled with the syllabus; the syllabus says, "The course will explore the many aspects of vampire literature’s evolution, from its origins in the gothic tradition to its recent incarnation as hip "urban fantasy" and “paranormal romance,”" but I after the early gothic stuff (most of which I'm either happy to reread or have been meaning to read) we jump to Interview with the Vampire (which I'm happy to reread, and which is certainly an important text in a vampire literature survey) and then I feel like it's all urban fantasy and paranormal romance from the past two decades -- excepting Let the Right One In (which I heard really good things about and have been meaning to see/read), The Historian (which I read not long after it came out, and which I don't actively dislike, but it's a long book, reminiscent of A.S.Byatt's Possession, and I'm not sure it has a whole lot to say about the enduring popularity of the vampire myth -- which I think is what this course is supposed to be about), and Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter (which I have been interested in reading, but which I feel like speaks less to the enduring popularity of vampires and more to the recent trend of mashups that add monsters to classic texts -- though it is one of the rare texts we're reading that focuses on a vampire *hunter,* and which also doesn't have a romantic/sexual element to the relationship between vampire and ~protagonist).