Most people think they know what a vampire is: a pale, fanged figure dressed in a black cloak, or perhaps an appealing, misunderstood, and eternally attractive suitor. We encounter vampires everywhere, from Halloween costumes to blockbuster films, and these images shape our expectations long before we pick up a book. This familiarity, cultural significance, and preconceived notion about vampires is a large part of what inspired Professor Christopher “Drew” Jones to create an entirely vampire-focused section of English 3264: Monsters Without and Within. The vampire “assumes an almost inexhaustible variety” and can therefore intrigue, but also connect with, a diverse audience.  

This broad appeal is important for English 3264 because the class counts toward the fulfillment of two general education themes: "Health and Wellbeing” and "Citizenship for a Just and Diverse World” general education themes. This results in a roster of students from across majors, which is unusual in an upper-division English course.  

To encompass the breadth of the vampire, Jones has established a reading list ranging from the 1800s to modern times. The course begins with Tolstoy’s 1839 short story “The Family of the Vourdalak” and ends with Lindqvist’s 2004 novel Let Me In. Other texts include Rice’s Interview with the Vampire, Matheson’s I Am Legend, and — of course — Dracula, both Stoker’s original 1897 novel and Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992), one of several film adaptations on the syllabus. “I feel obligated to teach Dracula as one of the foundations of the class, but there is so much more to the material than that novel,” Jones explains.  

Dracula, or rather his more modern adaptations, has become established as a symbol in pop culture and a recognizable monster among audiences. His figure, however, is far from the sole tradition of the vampire, and only one of many versions of such a versatile monster. From the early, peasant vampire of Eastern Europe to the seductive, 1900s American vampire, "just about every age, every culture, has produced its own variation on the figure,” explains Jones. “There is usually something, somewhere, in the tradition for everyone to connect with.” Jones hopes that through his selected readings and films, students will be able to “both to recognize what makes up a literary tradition and what constitutes a knowing departure from that tradition.” 

The vampire’s wide recognition and cultural significance is further established through their strange similarity to us, and another reason why Jones has focused his section specifically on vampires. “As monsters in literature go, the vampire has tended to be one of the most ‘human’—the most like us— and therefore is particularly effective for representing the range of things we fear, both societally and individually,” explains Jones. This ability to blend in with and mirror members of a community adds not only to the terror of the vampire, but also to its significance within literature as a conduit for discussions and analysis. By engaging with vampires through literature, students learn to participate in “an exercise of imaginative sympathy” that allows readers to see through the eyes of someone else—through the eyes of the monster itself. “Vampires aren’t real, but the questions they raise are: how do we create and impose categories on ourselves and the world around us?” Students study vampires not only as bloodsucking monsters, but as a complex manifestation of the fear of the ‘other.’ When this understanding is paired alongside the historical contexts of the evolution of the vampire over more than 200 years, students can examine not only how the changes in how the vampire is physically depicted, but also the change in society’s fear of what the vampire, or the ‘other’, means to them.   

The imaginative sympathy of an English class works to establish English 3264 as a particularly interesting course option for students in health-related disciplines, with the class counting toward the fulfillment of the “Health and Wellbeing” general education elective. As Jones explains, “Of all the anxieties that the literary vampire has served to express, high on the list are the fear of contagion and the fear of difference.” By dissecting representations of vampires in literature, students also dissect “how a given author or group thinks about the categories of ‘health’ and of the ‘other.’”  Studying the depth and complexity of these issues through an English class provides students an opportunity to engage in analytical discussions and reflections that other, STEM-focused courses, do not. For students in health and STEM fields, this elevated, humanistic understanding can provide a nuanced perspective for future science classes.  

This active engagement through discussion is another key aspect of Jones’s class. While he does dedicate some class time toward lecturing on the historical contexts of novels, student-led discussions make up the majority of the course: each student is responsible for developing discussion questions on their assigned class day. Through these student-led discussions, Jones creates opportunities for all students to speak up, especially those who feel less comfortable talking. “It helps the class be more interactive,” adds Jones.  By centering the course around discussions rather than lectures and encouraging different understandings of the texts and their themes, Jones pushes his students to develop their own analysis of the texts, rather than simply take in his interpretations. In English 3264, students aren’t just learning about vampires: they’re unpacking what the novels and films have to say about monstrosity. Most importantly, they’re reexamining what the idea of the ‘other’ means in their own lives and cultures.