All Program Dates
January 23, 2025 | 7:30 pm - 9:00 pm
February 6, 2025 | 7:30 pm - 9:00 pm
February 20, 2025 | 7:30 pm - 9:00 pm
March 6, 2025 | 7:30 pm - 9:00 pm
March 20, 2025 | 7:30 pm - 9:00 pm
Registration
Tuition for this course is $250. Members receive exclusive discounts on our programs and courses. Not a member? Learn more.
This course is limited to participants who are 18 years of age or older.
Please check your spam folder for your email confirmation. If you have questions, please call (215) 732-1600 or email rsvp@rosenbach.org.
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This course is now sold out.
If you are still interested in joining the waitlist, please email rsvp@rosenbach.org.
Description
Bram Stoker’s Dracula has become the ur-text of vampire fiction and lore. Stoker researched and wrote the novel over seven years, synthesizing vampire folklore and fiction to create a work that has continued to inspire fiction and film for over a hundred years. Many of the “rules” for both vampires and their hunters take their cue from Stoker’s novel. The Rosenbach Museum & Library is the home of Bram Stoker’s notes for Dracula, over 100 pages of outlines, early plot ideas, and research notes compiled by the author over the years he developed and wrote the novel. Also in our holdings are first editions of the novel, including its first paperback publication. We’ll consider how Dracula highlights the fears and anxieties of the culture that produced it and discover how this vampire story is just as much about themes of difference and otherness, race and ethnicity, and sexuality and gender, issues still relevant for contemporary readers. Along the way we’ll share copious images of Stoker’s notes and early editions to see how he first conceived his work, then altered his vision of the vampire. Finally, we’ll consider how the many adaptations of Count Dracula in film, television, and print have impacted the legacy of Stoker’s novel.
You can find more about our Dracula and vampire-related materials in the Dracula and Vampire Literature Guide
Instructor
Edward G. Pettit is the Sunstein Senior Manager of Public Programs at the Rosenbach. In 2020, he hosted Sundays with Dracula, a live 28–week series exploring Stoker’s novel, chapter-by-chapter. This Biblioventures series has also featured Frankenstein, Jane Eyre, Pride and Prejudice, The Pickwick Papers, and most recently, Sherlock Holmes. Pettit has also helped organize the Rosenbach’s marathon readings of Dracula. He continues his vampiric interest in his personal life as a consulting editor for the Dracula Beyond Stoker magazine.