Presented by the Centre for Cinema Studies and Cinema Thinks the World, the Critical Thinkers Series features research talks by notable and emerging scholars in Cinema and Media Studies. Join us for the next talk in the Fall 2026 Series by Dr. Gisèle Baxter, Honorary Research Associate in the Department of English Languages and Literature at UBC.
Beyond Bram Stoker: Vampires in the Contemporary World
This project originated in my lectures for a team-taught course whose focus was traveling texts, where the texts I contributed were Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula and Jim Jarmusch’s film Only Lovers Left Alive. The project has evolved to a general consideration of vampire films with contemporary settings, especially those attempting a certain level of realism. (When I started drafting my own vampire novel, I decided it had to be largely contemporary and it had to be secular, and it also had to address the impracticalities of many popular vampire tropes in a contemporary setting.) This excludes a lot of vampire films, but the ones remaining address, in intriguing ways, how vampires survive in a world where they’re not the only nocturnal beings and where survival might require a certain amount of interaction with non-vampires. I want to consider how the vampires themselves and their settings are visualized, and the extent to which the films create worlds viewers might find familiar. The core films include Only Lovers Left Alive, The Hunger, Tale of a Vampire, What We Do in the Shadows, House of Dark Shadows, Twilight, Forever Knight (a TV series, but useful), Vampire Academy, and of course others, though the talk will emphasize some in order to keep to its allotted time. (Note: the films have been chosen for their usefulness, not all have met with critical acclaim.)
About Dr. Gisèle Baxter
I moved from Nova Scotia to Vancouver in 1997 to teach in the Department of English Language and Literatures at UBC, and taught there as a Sessional Lecturer until September 2026; I am now an Honorary Research Associate. My teaching and research interests include 19th-21st century literary and cultural studies; Gothic studies; Victorian literature and 19th-century studies; Modernism, and science/speculative fiction. A recent project examining travel motifs in vampire narratives (especially Dracula and Only Lovers Left Alive) led to my current research and the subject of my talk. In my spare time, I take photos with my phone, attend to my cat, and continue to work on my own vampire novel.
This event is free and there is no need to RSVP.
