Programme:
Hannah Gilbert"Flexible Fangs: The vampire in folklore, fiction and contemporary culture"
Since Bram Stoker's enigmatic villain Count Dracula, the vampire has become a stable figure in Western culture, who is regularly re-animated in literature, television and film. However, our understandings of what the vampire is are more complex than the characteristics portrayed by that terror from Transylvania. This paper will discuss the influence of Dracula and his literary successors, examining the changing nature of the vampire in fiction, and its influence on and by Western culture. It will also examine issues underlying the problems with popular ideas about vampire authenticity, and how a merging of fiction, folkloric legend and experience has contributed to continuing presence.
Dr Stacey Abbot"‘Cancer with a Purpose: Putting the Cinematic Vampire under the Microscope"
The aim of this presentation will be to examine the evolving relationship that has existed between the vampire myth and science from as early as 18th Century Folklore and 19th Century literature and then consider how this relationship has evolved into cinema in films such as Nosferatu (1922)¸ Dracula (1931/1958), Last Man on Earth (1964), The Hunger (1983), Blade (1998), I Am Legend (2007), Daybreakers (2009), and Thirst (2009). The paper will focus particularly upon the late 20th and early 21st Century cinema that has completely reinvented the genre through the imagery and language of science and explore the significance and impact of this use of science for our understanding of the modern vampire. In particular the paper will consider how the modern vampire film has come to express contemporary anxieties about developments within science and their impact upon humanity and the body itself.
Dr Kathryn Harkup"The Science of Vampires"
There are those amongst us who shy away from sunlight, bite at the slightest opportunity and refuse any food containing the slightest hint of garlic. These people aren't all characters in Gothic novels and Hollywood movies either. This talk will look at some scientific theories for the origin of vampire myths.
Deborah Hyde'Myths and Monsters: the Vampire in History"
The Vampire has fascinated Western Europe from the early 1700s, but the tradition was a real part of Eastern European lives for a considerable time before that. In the last three centuries, the icon has been taken up in art of all kinds – literature, film and graphics – and it has had a lasting effect on fashion and culture. But what is the authentic story behind tales of the predatory, living dead and can we understand a little more about being human by studying these accounts? We will look at recent attempts to understand the folklore and try to work out how an Eastern European ritual made its way to late nineteenth century New England, USA.
John Fraser"The Men who 'Invented' Vampires??"
Was it simply Bram Stocker who started the vampire phenomenon? Was it encouraged by the Roumanian Communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu to increase the numbers of rich travellers to the area? Has that phenomenon been fed by others either to sell some books or as food for thought for 'Romantic' folklorists at conferences (such as this) or on the tourist trail ? And yet the concept of vampires seem to go far far back in time. Known in Romania as Strigoi or in Slavic countries as Upir. Is there perhaps a real phenomenon to be explored underneath all the Gothic ' Twilight' Gloss?.
"Vampire Diary: tracking media influence on the London vampire community"
Maria Mellins
Maria MellinsDrawing on empirical research of the London vampire community this paper tracks how modern vampire screen texts and wider cultural influences have impacted on the lifestyle subculture. The discussion will include an interrogation of popular multimedia franchises such as Twilight and True Blood, and the subsequent lifestyle factors that have emerged as a result. It will also map other cultural trends including Steampunk, and will demonstrate the positioning of the subculture in light of recent ‘happy goth’ sensibilities (Spooner, 2013).
"Slayage - Tools of the Vampire Hunter"
Jonathan Ferguson
Jonathan Ferguson"...a sacred bullet fired into the coffin will kill him so that he be true dead; and as for the stake through him, or the cut-off head that giveth rest, we have seen it with our eyes."
Professor Van Helsing, 'Dracula'
Whether portrayed as evil monster or misunderstood romantic, vampires have always been hunted. The fictional vampire slayer’s arsenal expands with every new book comic, film and video game produced; from stake shotguns to ultra-violet grenades. However, this array of specialist equipment contrasts sharply with the rather more mundane tools used by the real people who hunted (and continue to hunt) ‘real’ vampires.
The first half of this paper provides a survey of the evidence for the actual weapons, methods, and protective equipment used by slayers real and imagined. Special attention is paid to the differences between the worlds of folklore and fiction, but also shared themes and motifs along an evolutionary path. It concludes with a critical assessment of perhaps the only material culture available to students of this gory subject; the so-called ‘vampire killing kit’.
"The Undead of England and Elsewhere"
Scott Wood
Scott WoodWe know that unholy people and outsiders become vampires in eastern European folklore but the same happened in early medieval England and classical Western Europe. Starting with Scandinavian sagas and a moldering corpse in a woman’s bedroom to a moldering corpse in a woman’s cell in Bedlam and the last official staked corpse in London, Scott will trace a thread of fear of the angry and outsider dead in folklore and history.
He will ask what the undead baker of Bankside, the cheese-eating revenant of Lombard Street and a visit to the coffin of ‘Scratching Fanny’, and many others, say about English ghost-lore, vampires and the Europe-wide fear of the returned dead.
Tickets can be brought here:
http://www.assap.ac.uk/SeriouslyStaked/tickets.html
