Studious, Not Sparkly: Academics & Educators as The New Vampire
Cultural Studies Graduate Program Salon Seminar featuring Kees Schuller
Event Details
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Tuesday, March 26, 2024
7:00 PM - 9:00 PM
City: Peterborough
Traill College
Building: Wallis Hall
Room: 224
Cost: Free
While traditional, horror, and abjection-focused vampire fiction persists in some ways, in others, the idea of the vampire has been irrevocably changed by media such as True Blood, Twilight, Hotel Transylvania, and What We Do In The Shadows. In light of this changed perspective of the vampire, this talk will investigate the ways that three current book series (The Locked Tomb by Tamsyn Muir, Alex Stern by Leigh Bardugo, and The Scholomance by Naomi Novik) recast the vampire in the form of the academic and the educational institution, remaking traditionally safe, developmental spaces, and figures into monstrous, hungry ones. By centering monster theory as a critical framework for making meaning from this changing portrayal, this talk will move towards theories about why this change might be occurring.
This talk will contain spoilers for the three listed series, and may contain discussions of disordered eating, violence, self harm, and abusive relationships.
W. Kees Schuller (they/them) is a queer Ph.D. candidate in Trent University’s Cultural Studies program. They have a background in English literature, creative writing, and classical studies, and study various forms of genre fiction and their unique intersections with culture. Kees’ research interests include solarpunk, game studies, ecocriticism, and monster theory. They are a founding member of The Solarpunk Conference, and occasionally work as a consultant rules developer, technical writer, and fiction writer for an independent TTRPG and board game company.
Contact Info
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