The influence of Bram Stoker's 1897 Gothic masterpiece Dracula has been seismic on a global scale. Scholar Nick Groom compares the novel to a black hole, "irresistibly attracting" over a century of vampire tales, European folklore, historical accounts, medical reports, philosophical theories and religious debates. And indeed every vampire representation that follows in its wake must contend with its legacy, not only in literature, but in film, stage, television, video games, music, and fashion. This seminar offers a close, critical reading of Dracula supported by supplemental readings. Students will explore the novel through a wide range of topics and perspectives, including historical and literary sources, narrative technique, psychoanalysis, capitalism, imperial anxiety, racial degeneration, gender roles, sexual norms, Victorian anxieties and occult beliefs. Students will examine how this single novel is both the climax of and the progenitor to whole fields of popular culture and modern mythology. Our study will be supported by films and other texts, such as Polidori's The Vampyre, Le Fanu's Carmilla, Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper," and Oscar Wilde's The Portrait of Dorian Gray. "Blood, Empire, and the Undead—Reading Bram Stoker's Dracula" is an undergraduate seminar exploring the cultural history, literary mechanics, and lasting legacy of Bram Stoker's 1897 Gothic masterpiece.