Vampires Are in Our Heads!

I now have the rough draft of the conference paper done, and good timing too since school resumes tomorrow with all the distractions of students. But then, in many ways my students are a blessing to the vampire side of me: they keep me young, they keep me current, and they force my mind to think about old issues in new ways -- as well as reminding me of resources which are old to me (and I forget them), and new to them.

One of these forgotten, but wonderful, resources is Katerhine Ramsland's The Science of Vampires. In her rather marveolous text, she takes a look at what would have to happen for vampires to become real. She includes chapters focusing on "Dracula's Shadow" -- the part I was reminded of today -- among many others since it has particular relevance upon my conference paper, and the thesis of the conference itself, that our perceptions of vampires change over time. Ramsland says, "Our monsters are based in our fears and our fears derive from our understanding of reality: if reality changes, so do our fears"(51). Of course, with vampires, they are now as much a creature of romance as they are of fear.

I receive paper after paper which equates pain and fear with sex and love. Personally -- and on this blog I can state my opinion as my opinion (don't try it on me in a class paper, my students!) : I am not buying it. Maybe it is a facet of having too many shots, too much blood drawn over the years (Medical Doctors -- not vampires), but pain is pain. And I am not turned on by fear. A really scary man doesn't turn me on; he makes me want to go find a safe house. To be blunt, having sex with someone who could rather easily accidentally kill me due to super-strength or excessive hunger is just scary. And yet author after author is making a fair living selling novels positing that vampires are sexy, and that a "monster" can be tamed.

Buried Beneath Vampires

I am buried beneath vampires as details work themselves out for the "Open Graves Open Minds" conference in London April 16-17 (2010). I am manically working on creating the handout/overhead and catching up on the Victorian vampires I haven't met before. I thought I knew them all, then discovered a slew of them that are more available in the UK than they are in the US. Now I wonder how many are hiding in the EU and other National archives that nobody is mentioning. It would be nice if there were a international listing somewhere, but even my own over at simplysupernatural-vampire.com is incomplete. Some vampires aren't available anywhere online and the books or stories are extremely rare, and some require a request to the Library of Congress. Who would have thought that the Library of Congress actually will send its materials out through inter-library loan? I certainly didn't. My Victorian vampires are leading me on a treasure hunt through libraries all over the world.

The conference papers look interesting, and I am sad that I won't get to hear them all. But while I am reading my own paper, two other sessions of three papers will be going on, so for every session I attend, I miss six papers. I will have to choose sessions carefully. I will definitely miss anything that sounds jargony. I have no desire to listen to obscure over-erudite papers where you have to bend, fold, and mutilate to find the thesis and details. I read too many student papers that try to do that -- add enough words and the reader will believe that the paper contains meaning, when it doesn't. Sleight of hand papers irritate me.

Let the graves give up their dead...(paraphrase of Revelations).