Welcome to the website for the Lord Ruthven Award winning podcast The Vampire Historian. My name is Dax Stokes, and I am an academic reference librarian researching the origins of vampire lore and legend in Eastern Europe, especially in Christianity. I also keep up with the vampire in popular culture. This blog is a companion to my podcast, also called “The Vampire Historian,” which debuted in March 2015. The podcast and the blog cover vampires in folklore, history, literature, television and film.
Over the past few years, I organized two vampire studies symposia in Texas. The first, in 2015, was “There Are Such Things! Vampire Studies Symposium 2015.” In 2017, we held the “World Dracula Day 2017 Symposium.”
I have presented almost 20 lectures on vampires and Dracula in the North Texas area. Lecture topics include:
The Comic Lives of Dracula: How Bram Stokers Helped Create the Marvel Cinematic Universe
Transylvaninan Superstitions
The Real Dracula: Separating Vlad the Impaler from the Fictional Count
From Vlad the Impaler to Edward Cullen: Origins of the 21st Century Vampire in Myth, Literature, Television, and Film
The Future of Vampire Studies
Vampires on Screen
Vampires in 19th Century British Literature
Keeping the Dead…Dead: Burial Practices in Eastern Europe from the 1500s to Today
My Conference Report on the World Dracula Day 2017 Symposium can be found in the Fantastika Journal – Volume 1, Issue 2
My articles “Vampire Studies Symposium to Be Held in Texas on Halloween” can be found at https://vamped.org/2015/06/10/vampire-studies-symposium-to-be-held-in-texas-on-halloween/
And an earlier article “How I Spent Spring Break: Vampire Historian Meets Vampire Scholars,” is available at https://vamped.org/2015/04/23/how-i-spent-spring-break-vampire-historian-meets-vampire-scholars/
My first published article, “The Faces of Dracula,” can be found in the Vampire Edition of IndieJudge
My former blog was killingthedead.wordpress.com
Email me at thevampirehistorian@gmail.com
The Vampire Historian 