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| BATON ROUGE – When someone mentions vampires, the first name that typically comes to mind is Count Dracula. Whether its books, movies, television shows, plays or comic books, Dracula is at the top of the list when it comes to vampires. With the many portrayals of Dracula in media, LSU Ph.D. student John Edgar Browning, along with author Caroline Joan Picart, have set out to put together the definitive Dracula reference book with "Dracula: The Sourcebook, A Guide to Film and Television, Comic Books and Video Gaming." LSU Ph.D. students Laura Helen Marks and Mitch Frye also contributed chapter introductions to the book, and several of Browning's former undergraduate students from a class on composition and monster theory assisted with the research. "This work is the largest of its kind because it has cataloged more than 1,000 film, television program, documentary, adult features, animation, comic book, video game and theatrical titles in which Dracula, or his likeness, is featured," Browning said. Several prominent figures in Dracula studies have contributed to the completion of "Dracula: The Sourcebook," including Dacre Stoker, who wrote the foreword and is Bram Stoker's great grandnephew and co-author to the official Stoker family-sanctioned sequel to "Dracula"; David J. Skal, who wrote the introduction and world-renowned scholar and author of works on Dracula, vampires and horror; Ian Holt, who wrote the afterword and is a Dracula documentarian and co-author to the official Stoker family-sanctioned sequel to "Dracula"; Robert Eighteen-Bisang, who included a bibliographical essay and is the publisher of Transylvania Press, owner of the largest collection of books on Dracula in the world and co-author of the award-winning work of scholarship "Bram Stoker's Notes for 'Dracula'"; and J. Gordon Melton, who included a bibliographical essay and is an American religious scholar, founding director of the Institute for the Study of American Religion and world-renowned scholar and author of works on vampires. "Dracula: The Sourcebook," set to be published by McFarland in 2010, is broken down into four sections: "Dracula in Film, Television, Documentary and Animation Filmography"; "Dracula Adult Filmography"; "Dracula Comic Bibliography"; and "Dracula Video Gamography." In addition, there are four appendix sections: "Bibliographical Essay on Major Print Editions of 'Dracula'"; "'Dracula the Un-Dead,' an Overview, Excerpt and Media"; "Film, Television and Video Game Chronology"; and "Theatrical Adaptations." Browning, a native of Nashville, Tenn., is a Ph.D. student in English at LSU, where he also teaches courses on composition and monster theory. He is the author and editor of two other published and forthcoming books, including with Caroline Joan Picart, "Draculas, Vampires and Other Undead Forms: Essays on Gender, Race and Culture" and also with Picart, a collection of essays that examine the cultural and socio-political construction of monstrosity. Recent works also include several published and forthcoming book chapters and reviews, journal articles and encyclopedic entries on Dracula, vampires and horror in various scholarly publications that include "Film & History; Studies in the Fantastic," "Dead Reckonings: A Review magazine for the Horror Field," "Asian Gothic: Essays on Literature, Film and Anime" and the forthcoming "The Encyclopedia of the Vampire." Browning is currently conducting an ethnographic study to assess the prominent features, methods and practices by which persons in the greater New Orleans area self-identify as vampires. The information this study gathers about vampire self-identification could yield new insights into identity construction among "alternative" subcultures both in New Orleans and in the United States. He would like to elicit the help of Louisiana residents and others with useful information on local vampires, donors and/or victims (if any), to contact vampirology@live.com. Marks, a native of Bristol, England, is studying for her Ph.D in English and women's and gender studies at LSU. Her research focuses on representations of sexuality and gender in film and literature, with a particular interest in cultural and gendered perspectives on "obscene" and "pornographic" texts. Frye, a native of Aynor, S.C., is a Ph.D. candidate in English at LSU. His primary area of interest is American modernism, and much of his research concerns the exclusion of genre works from the modernist canon. His essays have appeared in The Chronicle of Higher Education, CRITIQUE, and Nabokov Studies. For more information, contact Browning at jbrow11@lsu.edu. -30- |
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