Profs & Pints DC: The Vampire as “Other”

Profs and Pints DC presents: “The Vampire as ‘Other,’” on a dreaded centuries-old creature as stand-in for those living in the margins, with Stanley Joseph Stepanic, who teaches a course on Dracula and vampire folklore as an assistant professor of Slavic languages and literature at the University of Virginia.

[Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Available at https://events.ticketleap.com/tickets/profsandpints/dc-vampire-as-other .]

The vampire has long been a malleable symbol of everything from repressed sexual desire to dreaded disease. From its beginnings, however, it has represented few things more than “otherness,” or the condition of having outsider status for whatever reason.

Explore the vampire as a symbol of otherness—and the many ways in which it has shape-shifted to fill this role—with Professor Stanley Stepanic, who has given several excellent Profs and Pints talks in the past.

He’ll start by digging up some of the oldest references to vampires in Slavic folklore and culture, such as the 1726 case of suspected Serbian vampire Arnold Paole and the subsequent panic it caused.

From there we’ll look at the rise of vampires in literature and film and how they have come to embody cultural anxieties related to race, ethnicity, gender, and other traits.

You’ll become familiar with Bela Lugosi, a Hungarian refugee whose thick accent stood in the way of his dreams of becoming an actor until play and film producers went looking for the perfect Dracula.

We’ll look at themes related to marginalization in the film Blacula, the Blade comics and film, the recent hit movie Sinners, and the video game The Blood of Dawnwalker.

You’ll emerge with a greater appreciation of why the vampire character resonates with anyone who has felt oppressed or relegated to the sidelines. (Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Listed time is for doors. The talk starts 30 minutes later.)
Image by Canva.