This project was conceived and produced as part of a fulfillment of the requirements for Dr. Mark Crosby’s ENGL 625 Ghosts, Goths, and Monsters class at Kansas State University during the Fall 2018 semester. I am currently a K-State graduate student pursuing my M.A. in Children’s Literature and will graduate in Spring 2020.

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This project focuses on vampire tropes in Gothic literature, starting with Carmilla (1871), through Dracula (1897), and ending with I Am Legend (1954). I was especially interested in the homoerotic nature of vampires in the nineteenth century and the powerful sexual threat that vampires pose in literature. While some things about vampires change over the course of 80 years between Carmilla and I Am Legend, I noticed that one similarity is their consistent association with sexuality and temptation.

I wanted to frame this project as another Gothic trope: the found manuscript. By (falsely) advertising the “discovery” of “never before seen” documents, I was hoping to replicate what so many authors have done. A found document creates an air of mystery for the reader, and by incorporating references to where and when the documents were found and how they were authenticated by forensic scientists, I hoped to make the “find” seem more credible and real. I also attempt to establish myself as a scholar and reference other scholars and materials to increase my own credibility.

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The false documents themselves are based on the novels they come from: Carmilla’s journal entry is from Carmilla; Dracula’s letter is from Dracula, and Ruth’s mission log is from I Am Legend. I chose this approach, because it felt more immersive than a standard website that you might read for information (like Wikipedia), and a big part of the appeal of Gothic literature is the reader’s ability to be wrapped up in the story and let their imagination work.

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Below is a Works Cited list for the primary and secondary texts and media I use on the other pages of this website. I have given appropriate photo credits to most photos as they appear, but some, like those on the home page, are public use images.

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I was excited to create a living document that can grow and change, and while I probably put in as much or more time to create this site as I would have put into an essay, I enjoyed having a moment of creativity and being able to express my ideas in a new way.

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WORKS CITED:

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“Brief History of Carmilla and Lesbian Vampirism in Film.” YouTube, uploaded by TheGothicAlice, 20 Jun 2017. https://youtu.be/BF9tHBY6iVs

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Buzwell, Greg. "Daughters of decadence: the New Woman in the Victorian fin de siècle." British Library, 15 May 2014, https://www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians/articles/daughters-of-decadence-the-new-woman-in-the-victorian-fin-de-siecle# 

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Byron, Lord George Gordon. “The Giaour: A Fragment of a Turkish Tale.” 1813. https://literat.ug.edu.pl/giaur/giaour.pdf

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Haefele-Thomas, Ardel. “‘One does things abroad that one would not dream of doing in England’: Miscegenation and Queer Female Vampirism in J. Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla and Florence Marryat’s The Blood of the Vampire.” Queer Others in Victorian Gothic : Transgressing Monstrosity, University of Wales Press, 2012, pp. 96-119, ProQuest Ebook Central.

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“I Am Legend - Book vs. Movie.” YouTube, uploaded by Kevin Wolfenberger, 12 Jun 2016. https://youtu.be/UOMF0ujTlek

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Le Fanu, Jospeh Sheridan. Carmilla. 1871. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2016.

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Matheson, Richard. I Am Legend. 1954. Tom Doherty Associates. 1995.

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McCrea, Barry. “Heterosexual Horror: Dracula, the Closet, and the Marriage-Plot.” NOVEL: A Forum on Fiction, vol. 43, no. 2, Summer 2010, pp. 251-270, Duke UP. JSTOR.

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Stoker, Bram. Dracula. 1897. Puffin, 2009.

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“Vlad The Impaler: The Real Dracula - Full AMAZING Documentary HD.” YouTube, uploaded by NWO Documentary Channel, 1 July 2017. https://youtu.be/7HJ99vTJEuU 

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Wilkinson, Jonathan Mark. “Born in Death”: Media and Identity in Post-War American and Global Fictions of the Undead, 2105. University of York, M.A. Thesis. http://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/8740/1/Jonathan%20Wilkinson%20-%20MA%20by%20Research%20-%20Corrections.pdf

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