ENGL 100/006: Reading and Writing About Language and Literatures
Vampires on Page and Screen: Transfusions and Transmutations
Term 1 MWF 2:00-3:00 p.m.
“I am all in a sea of wonders. I doubt; I fear; I think strange things, which I dare not confess to my own soul.” – Bram Stoker, Dracula
This course examines adaptations in something of the way vampire transformations work, by considering how elements of appearance remain but the resulting creature is always radically different. We’ll go in prepared, not with stakes and garlic but with the critical and theoretical tools needed to move beyond popular online discussions and enable consideration of various questions arising in creating through adaptation a separate text in a different genre. Our approach will be more that of literary and cultural studies than film studies, as we consider why stories about vampires, the blood-drinking immortals of myth and legend – and more recently of fiction and film – fascinate us and their adapters, and to what extent visualizing them results in a transfusion, a transmutation, or both.
Core texts tentatively include J. Sheridan LeFanu’s Carmilla, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, and three adaptations: one of Carmilla and two of Dracula (to be determined by class vote) as well as Gardner and Diaz, Reading and Writing About Literature (6th edition). Through readings in current criticism and theory, we will develop strategies for textual analysis in literary and cultural studies. We will also consider the difficulty, if not impossibility, of reaching a “fixed” or consensus reading of any text.
Evaluation will tentatively be based on a midterm essay and a term paper (both requiring secondary academic research), a final reflection essay, and participation in discussion.
Keep checking this site for updates concerning texts and requirements.