14 DAY TRIAL // “Open Graves, Open Minds: Vampires and the Undead in Modern Culture” is the name of the first-ever conference that will deal with vampires and their roles in literature, movies, music, and other media. The event will take place tomorrow, April 16, at the University of Hertfordshire de Havilland campus, and will represent the first such initiative in the United Kingdom. The meeting was organized by UH English Literature lecturer Dr Sam George, who wants to encourage students to opt for an MA in literature, AlphaGalileo reports.
“[I was] struck by the irony of creatures with no reflection becoming such a pervasive reflection of modern culture. Vampires have enacted a host of anxieties and desires, shifting shape as the culture they are brought to life in itself changes form. More recently, their less charismatic undead cousins, zombies, have been dug up in droves to represent various fears and crises in contemporary culture,” she explains of the reasons why the conference was set up. The lecturer has just launched an MA course entitled “Reading the Vampire” at the university and is interested in attracting more students.
At tomorrow's meeting, the various manifestations that vampires take in ancient, classic and modern literature and art will be carefully analyzed. In addition, the researchers will also look at the large number of cultural meanings that the creatures have taken over the millennia, depending on the society in which they appeared. “There is no denying that vampires are enjoying a vogue and the new breed of vampires are far from monstrous, they still embody appetite but they’ve ‘learned how to sparkle’ (to quote Dr Catherine Spooner, one of the keynote speakers) they are sexy and have an emotional side,” Dr George adds.
She adds that, generally, even Hollywood preferred casting British actors to play vampires. But now, with the emergence of new phenomena such as the Twilight book series and shows such as “True Blood,” there is a greater tendency to cast American actors, and to essentially “Americanize” the modern representations of vampires. “The most famous vampire narrative of all, Dracula, was written by an Irishman and set in London and Whitby […] Spike the English vampire in Buffy is Joss Whedon’s take on this in the 90s […] I was driven by the desire to put the British vampire back on the map in the 2010s,” Dr George concludes.