FYI
________________________________________
From: H-Net Discussion List on Folklore and Ethnology [[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Jim Doan [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Thursday, November 17, 2011 8:42 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [H-FOLK] The Universal Vampire

Though you were kind enough to post a cfp for a volume of collected essays
on the vampire in August, my colleague (Barbara Brodman) and I have further
elaborated on this, now looking for up to 30 essays on the topic for two
volumes. We particularly need more contributions on the vampire in folklore
and mythology. I’m attaching a copy of the revised cfp if you would be kind
enough to send it out to the list.



Many thanks,



James Doan



               CALL FOR PAPERS

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.



Competition



Two recent studies have endeavored to trace the development of the Vampire
in literature, film and popular culture: John Edgar Browning and Caroline
Joan (Kay) Picart’s Draculas, Vampires, and Other Undead Forms: Essays on
Gender, Race, and Culture (Scarecrow Press, 2009) and Matthew Beresford’s
From Demons to Dracula: The Creation of the Modern Vampire Myth (Reaktion
Books, 2008). Both of these collections are devoted largely to the Dracula
mythos, the subject as well of Elizabeth Kostova’s 2005 The Historian: A
Novel (Little, Brown and Company). In our proposed collection, we plan to
extend this discussion outwards from a focus primarily on Dracula to the
notion that the vampire is truly universal, with the literary Count only one
manifestation.



Anticipated date of completion



September 2012



About the Editors



Barbara Brodman is Professor of Humanities at Nova Southeastern University,
where she teaches courses in international history and literature. With
graduate degrees from the University of New Hampshire and the University of
Florida in both literature and the social sciences, her research favors
interdisciplinary studies of topics ranging from the Mexican cult of death
to the Don Juan legend to the universal legend of the vampire.



James E. Doan is Professor of Humanities at Nova Southeastern University,
where he teaches courses in literature, the arts, folklore and mythology.
With an M.A. in Folklore and Mythology from U.C.L.A. and a Ph.D. in Folklore
and Celtic Studies from Harvard University, he has long been interested in
the relation between folklore and literature, including the development of
the vampire legend from its mythic origins to modern film and other
cultural productions.



Both Brodman and Doan have published extensively in their fields of research
and present fresh research regularly at conference. Their collaboration on
this collection derives from a co-authored paper on the Don Juan and
vampire legends, which they successfully presented at conference and to
their peers in 2009.