The vampire, one of the 19th century's most enduring literary archetypes, has remained a pervasive influence not only in the literary imagination but also in popular culture, from the multivalent representations of stage and screen to the myriad appropriations in media, fashion, music, technology, graphic novels, club culture, video games, opera, children's programs and cereal boxes. Situated at the intersections of race, ethnicity, gender, class, and sexuality, the vampire's ever-shifting identity often reveals a society's most marginalized impulses and anxieties. In this course, we consider the vampire in literature and film through several interpretive lenses and approaches. Students will read historic documents and folkloric accounts from eastern Europe, as we trace the earliest appearances of the vampire through the works of Polidori, Le Fanu and Stoker, right up to contemporary writers such as Octavia E. Butler, Stephen King, Richard Mattheson, Anne Rice, and John Ajvide Lindqvist. Paying particular attention to the rise of the novel and cinema, we will study the genre conventions of the horror story in general and the vampire tale in particular, covering craft elements such as plot, character, point-of-view, setting, pacing and style. This comprehensive investigation of both the historical roots and current interpretations of this creature sheds light on notions of sexuality, gender, consumption, power, alienation, attitudes toward illness, eroticism, religion, socio-economic disparity, and evil in contemporary society. We view films such as: Carmilla, Hammer Films’ The Vampire Lovers, Nosferatu, Dracula, Blacula, Near Dark, The Lost Boys, The Hunger, A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night, Let the Right One In, What We Do In The Shadows, Midnight Mass, as well as selections from True Blood, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, and Twilight. This comprehensive investigation of both the historical roots and current interpretations of this creature sheds light on notions of sexuality, gender, consumption, power, alienation, attitudes toward illness, eroticism, religion, socio-economic disparity, and evil in contemporary society.