Profs & Pints DC: The Life of the Vampire

Profs and Pints DC presents: “The Life of the Vampire,” a look at the origins and evolution of a feared and beloved cultural icon, with Stanley Joseph Stepanic, who teaches a course on Dracula and vampire folklore as an assistant professor of Slavic languages and literature at the University of Virginia.

You’ve almost certainly encountered vampires in films, literature, and perhaps even comic books or video games. They’re often portrayed in modern media as sexy and stimulating figures, eliciting admiration, envy, and, in some cases, even desire for marriage.

They’d be almost unrecognizable, however, to those who truly believed in the existence of vampires way back in the day, after learning about them through old Slavic folklore.

Come take flight through time and the darkest corners of the human imagination to learn about the origins of vampire beliefs, which date at least as far back as the 9th century A.D.…