4 March 2013

When a Narrative Really Sucks: Literature & Vampires


Please join us for the next seminar of Inventions of the Text 2012/13



When a Narrative Really Sucks: A Brief Historical Survey of Vampirism in Culture, Literature, and Film (18th-21st c.)

Dr. Clemens Ruthner




Trinity College Dublin



***


Tuesday 12th March 2013



5:30 – 7:00 pm



Department of English Studies, Hallgarth House Seminar Room




***


Speaker: Dr. Clemens Ruthner, Trinity College Dublin


ABSTRACT
Vampirism not only thematizes 'undead life', it also sucks the life out of other texts and thus becomes the epitome of intertextuality. This talk will lead you through the different stages of the cultural appropriation of the vampire as viral mask of the Other: from the demonic "proto-vampires" of Antiquity to the spectacular historical cases of vampire mass hysteria in Serbia (1725-32) and their 'media' aftermath, and then further to the first literary texts, until the narrative of vampirism as a secular cultural phantasma is fixated by Stoker's Dracula in 1897, and its current, postmodern format by Anne Rice, not to forget the various 'young adoslecent' versions of vampire who is also used as a trope of immigration lately.



ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Dr Clemens Ruthner is Assistant Professor of German and European Studies and Director of Research at the School of Languages, Literatures and Cultural Studies of Trinity College, Dublin. His research /publications focus on Austrian literature and culture from the 19th to the 21st century, Central European Studies, constructions of identity and Otherness, imago logy, Imperial and  Postcolonial Studies (Bosnia-Herzegovina, 1878-1918) and literary/cultural theory. He is one of the leading vampire experts in German Studies and working on a comprehensive literary and cultural history of the phenomenon in the German-speaking world.






For more information, find us on facebook, follow us on Twitter (@inventionsSem) or check our blog: inventionsofthetext.blogspot.com

No comments: