#anthony stepniak

[disast3rtransp0rt]

I wrote about 40 pages of my MA English thesis about sexy (queer) vamp lore, and I'm gonna sum up about 200 years of literary development really fast:

Vampires are and always have been a symbol of the Other. Dracula can be read as a queer or racialized Other, specifically, a "beast from the east" bent on destroying the Beautiful And Totally Not Evil Country Of England. He intends to steal the women with his powers of sexy conversation and biting. This conclusion is drawn from the things Jonathan fears most about Dracula, namely his ability to blend in, his extensive knowledge of Western culture, and his talents for "charming"/manipulating others.

Also, let's talk about the Victorian Travel Trope! In Barry McCrea's essay “Heterosexual Horror: Dracula, the Closet, and the Marriage-Plot” he states:

The novel opens with a physical movement from West to mysterious East, with a detailed account by Jonathan of his train and coach trips across Europe to Transylvania… The further east he goes, the stranger his surroundings and encounters become. As is standard narrative practice, the reader is a step ahead of the naive Jonathan; we know that all is not well; we know that things will get stranger before they get more familiar. Narrative convention trains us to expect the domestic world that opens the novel to fall away in importance as the occult disaster story takes over. Yet the narrative perspective will fail to follow this trajectory in Dracula… On the broadest structural level, as we move from England to Transylvania, the novel moves from adolescence to maturity, from struggling bachelorhood to married stability.

In many Victorian/gothic novels, the feminine protagonist moves from her place of residence to her future spouse's home (Jane Eyre, The Mysteries of Udolpho, Rebecca, In a Glass Darkly etc.). In Dracula, we see Jonathan acting out this role, “the novel begins with an engagement (between Jonathan and Mina) and moves to a cohabiting couple (Jonathan and Dracula)” (McCrea 259). In that way, their relationship is very queer-coded.

HOWEVER! Because Dracula never drinks from Jonathan (ie: never penetrates him to fully consummate their 'marriage'), Jonathan is allowed to return to England and Mina, restoring a heterosexual lens to the story and further vilifying vampirism.

Additionally, vampires are free from the standards of binary gender performance because “with both the male and the female of the species obtaining this phallic symbol [fangs], distinctions between the sexes are blurred… through being able to penetrate and be penetrated by either the male or females of the species, heteronormative binaries of sexuality are transgressed” (Stepniak, Anthony. “Actualising Abjection: Drusilla, the Whedonverse's Queen of Queerness.” Slayage: The Journal of Whedon Studies, 2017. Page 3). So for all intents and purposes, anyone who doesn't fit the heteronormative, cisgender, white expectations of the English upper-middle class is in vampire territory.

TLDR: Vampires are hot because they break every possible binary and also because queer, non-white, and non-English readers have been identifying with their social ostracization for hundreds of years.

BONUS FACT: Bram Stoker was Irish (there was some seriously rough internalized stuff going on regarding the anti-Irish sentiments shared by many of his English friends and literary contemporaries) and close friends with Oscar Wilde until Wilde's eventual arrest and imprisonment.

My favorite part of reading Dracula with tumblr was people loathing Dracula. I was prepared for everyone to be all swoony and reverent and “oh, he’s so awful, drain me, Daddy”

instead?

Pure vitriolic hatred. Loathing. The swooning was, as it should have been, firmly placed on Jonathan. Mina’s husband. Mina’s soulmate.

If you had told me that the prevailing sentiment on my dash at the end of the year would be “Fuck Dracula, all my homies hate Dracula” back in May, I would not have believed you.

Also, pour one out for Quincey Morris. Amen.

[usstudiesonline]

Review: Investigating Identities in Young Adult (YA) Narratives

'From Harry Potter to The Hunger Games, Young Adult (YA) narratives have become increasingly popular—commercially and critically—in recent years.' Dani Moriarty reviews 'Investigating Identities in YA Narratives'

‘Investigating Identities in Young Adult YA Narratives’, University of Northampton, 16 December 2017

From Harry Potter to The Hunger Games, Young Adult (YA) narratives have become increasingly popular—commercially and critically—in recent years. This one-day conference, organised by Dr Sonya Andermahr and Mr Anthony Stepniak, explored the construction of identity in YA narratives and the extent…

[stevescoles]

What do young people's stories tell us about who they are?

What do young people’s stories tell us about who they are?

On December 16 2017, the University of Northampton presented Investigating Identities in Young Adult YA Narratives: One Day Symposium, organised by PhD student Anthony Stepniak and MA English course leader Dr Sonya Andermahr, Tré Ventour reports…

Arriving at 8:30am, I was met by my peers, second-year English and Creative Writing students Michael Lukose and Alex Cojocaru (co-organisers). Dr Helen…

[nqbuddy]

What do young people's stories tell us about who they are?

What do young people’s stories tell us about who they are?

On December 16 2017, the University of Northampton presented Investigating Identities in Young Adult YA Narratives: One Day Symposium, organised by PhD student Anthony Stepniak and MA English course leader Dr Sonya Andermahr, Tré Ventour reports… Arriving at 8:30am, I was met by my peers, second-year English and Creative Writing students Michael Lukose and Alex Cojocaru (co-organisers). Dr Helen…

[usstudiesonline]

Review: Bowie's Books Conference

Anthony Stepniak reviews Bowie's Books Conference, University of Northampton, 13-14 Jan 2017

‘Bowie’s Books’, University of Northampton, 13-14 January 2017.

Few musicians, perhaps, have been so closely identified with literature than David Bowie. Marking just over a year since the artist’s death ‘Bowie’s Books’, organised by Professor Richard Canning and Dr Sam Reese, gathered scholars from a variety of backgrounds for an interdisciplinary conference on Bowie’s relationship with…