{"id":6087,"date":"2013-11-05T12:26:00","date_gmt":"2013-11-05T19:26:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=6087"},"modified":"2013-11-05T12:26:35","modified_gmt":"2013-11-05T19:26:35","slug":"vampires-and-the-big-blue-marble","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=6087","title":{"rendered":"Vampires and the Big Blue Marble"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I shared a cabin with Margot Adler and some other presenters at the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.flapagan.org\/\">Florida Pagan Gathering<\/a> four years ago. At that point she had read about seventy vampire novels and was still going strong, looking for the answer to the question, &#8220;Why do literary vampires fascinate us?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Now she thinks she knows:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Every age embraces the vampires it needs, writes feminist author Nina Auerbach in her book, <em>Our Vampires, Ourselves.<\/em> Every age uses vampires to express their fears and concerns, writes Eric Nuzum, in his book, <em>The Dead Travel Fast<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>In 1897 when Bram Stoker wrote <em>Dracula<\/em>, England had the largest ports in the world. There was fear of incoming disease, of foreigners, of immigration. And Stoker created the perfect monster, Eastern European, bringing dirt from a foreign land. You can do this for every period that has had a wave of interest in vampires. In the 80\u2019s, with Aids, vampires were often described in novels as parasites. You became infected by vampirism, like a disease.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.judson.org\/sermons\/view\/315\">Here is the whole text and video of\u00a0 her recent presentation.\u00a0<\/a> Read it, and the title of this post will make sense.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I shared a cabin with Margot Adler and some other presenters at the Florida Pagan Gathering four years ago. At that point she had read about seventy vampire novels and was still going strong, looking for the answer to the question, &#8220;Why do literary vampires fascinate us?&#8221; Now she thinks she knows: Every age embraces [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[114,123,12],"class_list":["post-6087","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-environmentalism","tag-vampires","tag-writing"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-1Ab","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":7119,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=7119","url_meta":{"origin":6087,"position":0},"title":"Links: Exorcists, Vampires, Shamans, and the New Gothic","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"April 13, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"So many links, so little time to comment. Pick one, two, or three of these to read. Mix and match. Fill your plate. Come back for more. \u2022 Sexy vampires threaten Catholic youth, thus encouraging \u2014 you guessed it \u2014 \"dabbling.\" \u2022 Witchy craft: I am building these. \u2022 Another\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Christianity\"","block_context":{"text":"Christianity","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=christianity"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.independent.co.uk\/incoming\/article10174021.ece\/alternates\/w460\/v2-21-True-Blood.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1677,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1677","url_meta":{"origin":6087,"position":1},"title":"Teens, Vampires, and Seventeen magazine","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"June 15, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"If I were still teaching magazine writing, I would be sending students to this blog (which I found on Rod Dreher's blog). What a great feature-writing idea, albeit in blog form. (Which all goes to show how publishing is changing, &c. &c., and I am glad not to have to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"teens\"","block_context":{"text":"teens","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=teens"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":11680,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=11680","url_meta":{"origin":6087,"position":2},"title":"Call for Papers: Fairies and Gothic Literature and Culture","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"August 11, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"\"Fairies and fashion\" as a suggested topic? Someone must have seen my \"Dior Dresses the Fair Folk\" post! Seriously, there are some fascinating topics under potential consideration for this conference: Call for papers: Gothic encounters with enchantment and the Faerie realm in literature and culture University of Hertfordshire, 8\u201310 April\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"academia\"","block_context":{"text":"academia","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=academia"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5314,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=5314","url_meta":{"origin":6087,"position":3},"title":"Hogwarts for Vampires","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"March 11, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Maybe if I had a bookish teenage daughter I would know this, but the boarding-school-for-vampires (etc.) genre has exploded. Here is a typical cover blurb: Two years after a horrible incident made them run away, vampire princess Lissa and her guardian-in-training Rose are found and returned to St. Vladimir's Academy,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"publishing\"","block_context":{"text":"publishing","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=publishing"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1494,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1494","url_meta":{"origin":6087,"position":4},"title":"Margot Adler&#8217;s Vampire Reading List","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"April 5, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Pagan journalist Margot Adler offers an NPR piece on \"do-good vampires\" along with a book list. She tells me that she has now read eighty-nine contemporary vampire books, as of this week. I am waiting for the definitive review essay.","rel":"","context":"In \"publishing\"","block_context":{"text":"publishing","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=publishing"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2026,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=2026","url_meta":{"origin":6087,"position":5},"title":"When You Meet the Buddha in the Road, Bite Him","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"November 18, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"We have a best-selling series of romance novels about vampires written by a Mormon. But we also have a popular, if not so huge, series of romance novels about people in Amish communities, by a writer who grew up around Amish people but is not herself Amish. Is this a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"American religion\"","block_context":{"text":"American religion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=american-religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6087","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6087"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6087\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6089,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6087\/revisions\/6089"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6087"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6087"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6087"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}