Training in writing expository prose. Further instruction in expository writing in conjunction with reading literature. Satisfies the second half of the Reading and Composition requirement.

Across their various tellings and retellings, vampire stories have used their monsters to work through a range of social fears and ideas—about the other, about transformation, about infection and contagion. The vampire has acted as a potent site for exploring overlapping beliefs about the stranger, particularly the relation between outsider and community, fears about conspiracy and collapse of empire, and hopes for social change. As an R1B, our course will approach these stories critically: we will engage the nuances and disturbances within these tales, and we will research how the vampire allegory shifts as it is told in different historical contexts, and across a range of political and aesthetic aims. The course will survey depictions of vampires in literature and film from the late nineteenth century through to the present, with a focus on American works that bring together a host of global traditions. We will look at earlier stories that use images of the vampire to establish social allegories of the stranger as well as unsettle them; and we will also look at later stories that repurpose traditional accounts of the vampire in order to imagine alternative modes of embodiment and of community. Texts may include Dracula by Bram Stoker; early film adaptations and their reception in the lead-up to WWII; Fledgling by Octavia Butler; writings on the queer “vamp”; and selected short stories, poems, essays, and films. In your research essays, you will have the opportunity to write about a vampire story from the course materials or from your own choosing.

Requisites

• Previously passed an R_A course with a letter grade of C- or better. Previously passed an articulated R_A course with a letter grade of C- or better. Score a 4 on the Advanced Placement Exam in English Literature and Composition. Score a 4 or 5 on the Advanced Placement Exam in English Language and Composition. Score of 5, 6, or 7 on the International Baccalaureate Higher Level Examination in English.

Repeat Rules

Course is not repeatable for credit.

Requirements class fulfills