Drops of Slavic Blood: Vampires Real and Imagined

The vampire at once intrigues and horrifies, seduces and repels. It has become one of the most enduring figures of Western – and, in an even more ancient context, Eastern – literatures and cultures. For more than a thousand years, stories of reanimated creatures that sustain their own lives by taking away the “life force” of other living beings have filled our imaginations and the pages of world literatures. These tales that deal with the most essential questions of life and death continue to resonate and fascinate around the globe in novels, film, and popular culture into the 21st century. This talk examines the Slavic and Eastern European sources of the vampire myth from their folkloric and historical origins in the Balkans to the creation of literary vampires and, finally, to modern iterations of the vampire in Putin’s Russia.

About the Speaker

Thomas Jesús Garza is Associate Professor in the Department of Slavic and Eurasian Studies and Founding Director of the College of Liberal Arts Texas Language Center at the University of Texas at Austin. He teaches courses on Russian language and culture, world literatures, and Russian popular culture. Between 1979 and 2020, he travelled frequently to Russia and lived in Moscow for several years. He received his doctorate from Harvard University in 1987. During his more than 30-year tenure at U Texas, he has received numerous prizes for undergraduate and graduate teaching and was inducted into the University Academy of Distinguished Teachers in 2003, selected for a U Texas Regents’ Outstanding Teaching Award in 2009, and chosen a “Texas Top Ten” instructor by the Texas Exes in 2018. He has published articles in Modern Language Journal, Foreign Language Annuals, Slavic and East European Journal, Russian Language Journal, and Current History. He recently completed a book manuscript on filmic portraits of machismo in contemporary Russian and Mexican cultures and is currently working on a new project on Russian actor and bard Vladimir Vysotsky in the Americas in the 1970s, and a co-edited volume on decolonizing Russian studies in the U.S. with Rachel Stauffer.

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