Using Vampires in an Interdisciplinary Course to Explore Social Constructs and Literacy Development

At the time of my internship, I knew I would focus on the vampire archetype in literature and pop-culture remediations based on how prevalent the monster is and the likelihood of students having at least some foundational information about the creatures. My research and data collection were predicated on literacy development for an interdisciplinary, general education course, IDS121: Texts & Contexts. The aim of the course is to examine one specific genre of literary archetypes and trace its trajectory across cultures, mediums, and ecologies. Students learn to identify key elements of the vampire that define its parameters and explore how those elements are challenged or reinforced as the archetype moves through multimodal spaces. In the end, students would be able to quantify what those changes are but also articulate what they mean within a given social lens, such as feminism or elitism. This chapter involves the specific changes implemented in light of the research conducted regarding the global gothic, onomastic, and non-verbal components which not only corrected what I view as failings of the initial course but more broadly improved the multicultural aspects, making it a more diverse and inclusive experience.