John Edgar Browning | |
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Born | [1] Nashville, Tennessee, United States | October 14, 1980
Occupation | Writer, Scholar, Professor |
Language | English |
Education | A.A., B.A., M.A, Ph.D. |
Alma mater | Florida State University; University of Central Oklahoma; Louisiana State University; University at Buffalo |
Genre | Horror non-fiction |
Years active | 2005–present |
Notable awards | Lord Ruthven Award (International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts) |
Website | |
johnedgarbrowning |
John Edgar Browning (born October 14, 1980) is an American author, editor, and scholar known for his nonfiction works about the horror genre, Dracula, and vampires in film, literature, and culture. [2] Previously a visiting lecturer at the Georgia Institute of Technology, he is now a professor of liberal arts at the Savannah College of Art and Design in Atlanta, Georgia.
Browning is considered an "expert on vampires specializing in the Dracula figure in film, literature, television, and popular culture". [3] His works expound upon Dracula, horror, vampires, the supernatural, the un-dead, Bram Stoker, and gothic and cultural theory. Browning has appeared as an expert scholar on multiple documentary television series and consulted a number of other productions behind the scenes, including: National Geographic Channel's Taboo USA , [4] Discovery Channel's William Shatner's Weird or What? , [5] the seven-part AMC documentary series Eli Roth's History of Horror , and History Channel's The UnXplained .
For his book Dracula in Visual Media, Browning documented over 700 "domestic and international Dracula films, television programs, documentaries, adult features, animations, and video games . . . [as well as] nearly 1000 domestic and international comic book titles and stage adaptations". [6] For the book, Browning won the Lord Ruthven Award, an award for deserving work in vampire fiction or scholarship. [7] The book was also nominated for the Rondo Hatton Classic Horror Award (often called the Rondo Award) for Book of the Year in 2011, [8] as was his book The Vampire; or, Detective Brand's Greatest Case in 2023 for Best Classic Horror Fiction, co-edited with Gary D. Rhodes. [9]
Browning earned his B.A. from Florida State University and then his M.A. at the University of Central Oklahoma. He completed all his English doctoral coursework at Louisiana State University before transferring to American Studies at the University at Buffalo, The State University of New York (SUNY-Buffalo), where he studied under Michael H. Frisch, Bruce Jackson, Sarah Elder, and Donald A. Grinde, Jr. [10]
At SUNY-Buffalo, Browning received an Arthur A. Schomburg Fellowship in the Department of Transnational Studies. While there, Browning continued his doctoral studies and served as an adjunct instructor in English. [11] One of the courses Browning taught at SUNY-Buffalo was "A Cultural History of the Walking Dead," a fifteen-week course. [12] The course drew on Richard Matheson's novel I Am Legend as well as the films of George A. Romero. [13] While teaching at the Georgia Institute of Technology, Browning lectured on vampires, zombies, and monsters, [14] as well as on Slasher cinema in a course entitled, "The Slasher Film: Gender, Disability, and Transgression." [15]
For part of his doctoral dissertation, Browning conducted, over a period of two years, an ethnographic study of people who self-identify as vampire in New Orleans. [16] Browning's fieldnotes recount the experience: "On the eve of the second Tuesday of every month, I have become, to the watchful bystander, a familiar presence in the French Quarter. Flying through the dusky sky over Bourbon Street, as I strolled along casually, were fast, sweeping brown bats: An homage, maybe, to the business of interviewing vampires? To my side hung the trusty brown leather satchel that housed my pen and paper, and digital voice recorder. I left politely at home, of course, the crucifix I didn't actually own, and the short wooden stake carved for me by an older brother when I was younger. For indeed the vampires with whom I was meeting tonight were not prisoners of lore and legend: theirs was a new lore, and they were becoming very quickly their own legend." [17] Browning extended his ethnographic fieldwork to include real vampires living in Buffalo, NY.
For an op-ed in Deep South Magazine entitled Conversations with Real Vampires, Browning's notes further recount the experience: "We are meeting an hour later than usual for the third month in a row, because the sun, during the summer months, sets closer to 9 instead of 8. Tonight, I will ask for the first time if I can watch them feed." [18] Browning has more recently elaborated on his experiences in Palgrave Communications , [19] The Conversation UK , [20] twice in Discover (magazine) [21] and The Atlantic. [22]
Browning sits on a number of editorial and advisory boards, including the Board of Advisors [23] for The Blood Project (TBP) based out of Harvard Medical School, its members representing "leaders in their fields, including hematology, medical education, history of medicine, comparative and evolutionary medicine, art and medicine, literature in medicine, health literacy, and medical training in under-represented minorities". [24] He also sits on the Editorial Advisory Panel [25] for Humanities & Social Sciences Communications (a Springer Nature journal), previously called Palgrave Communications; the Advisory Board [26] for Ethics International Press, founded in 1993 in Cambridge, UK to publish "academic books on Ethics and all related and associated topics" for "leading universities worldwide, the British Government, the European Commission, and to wholesalers, bookshops, libraries, agents, and individuals around the world"; [27] the Editorial Board [28] for the Journal of Positive Sexuality, a multidisciplinary publication "designed to be accessible and beneficial to a large and diverse readership, including academics, policymakers, clinicians, educators, and students"; the Advisory Board [29] for the Series on Law, Culture and the Humanities, edited by Caroline Joan S. Picart and published by Fairleigh Dickinson University Press; as well as the Executive Advisory Committee [30] for The Journal of Gods and Monsters, published through the Department of Philosophy at Texas State University.
Abraham "Bram" Stoker was an Irish author who is best known for writing the 1897 Gothic horror novel Dracula. During his lifetime, he was better known as the personal assistant of actor Sir Henry Irving and business manager of the West End's Lyceum Theatre, which Irving owned.
Dracula is a 1897 horror novel by Irish author Bram Stoker. An epistolary novel and a classic of English literature, the narrative is related through letters, diary entries, and newspaper articles. It has no single protagonist and opens with solicitor Jonathan Harker taking a business trip to stay at the castle of a Transylvanian nobleman, Count Dracula. Harker escapes the castle after discovering that Dracula is a vampire, and the Count moves to England and plagues the seaside town of Whitby. A small group, led by Abraham Van Helsing, investigate, hunt, and kill Dracula.
Horror is a genre of speculative fiction that is intended to disturb, frighten, or scare. Horror is often divided into the sub-genres of psychological horror and supernatural horror. Literary historian J. A. Cuddon, in 1984, defined the horror story as "a piece of fiction in prose of variable length ... which shocks, or even frightens the reader, or perhaps induces a feeling of repulsion or loathing". Horror intends to create an eerie and frightening atmosphere for the reader. Often the central menace of a work of horror fiction can be interpreted as a metaphor for larger fears of a society.
The undead are beings in mythology, legend, or fiction that are deceased but behave as if they were alive. A common example of an undead being is a corpse reanimated by supernatural forces, by the application of either the deceased's own life force or that of a supernatural being. The undead may be incorporeal (ghosts) or corporeal.
Vampire films have been a staple in world cinema since the era of silent films, so much so that the depiction of vampires in popular culture is strongly based upon their depiction in films throughout the years. The most popular cinematic adaptation of vampire fiction has been from Bram Stoker's 1897 novel Dracula, with over 170 versions to date. Running a distant second are adaptations of the 1872 novel Carmilla by Sheridan Le Fanu.
Erotic horror, alternately called horror erotica or dark erotica, is a genre of fiction in which sensual or sexual imagery are blended with horrific overtones or story elements for the purpose of sexual titillation. Horror fiction of this type is most common in literature and film.
LGBTQ themes in horror fiction refers to sexuality in horror fiction that can often focus on LGBTQ+ characters and themes within various forms of media. It may deal with characters who are coded as or who are openly LGBTQ+, or it may deal with themes or plots that are specific to gender and sexual minorities.
Dracula: The Series is a syndicated series about Count Dracula, and was broadcast from September 29, 1990, to May 11, 1991.
Dracula is a 1931 Spanish-language American horror film directed by George Melford. The film is based on both the novel Dracula by Bram Stoker and its 1924 play adaptation by Hamilton Deane and John L. Balderston. It follows the eponymous vampire Conde Drácula as he travels from Transylvania to England to prey upon new victims. The film stars Carlos Villarías as Drácula, alongside Barry Norton, Pablo Alvarez Rubio, and Eduardo Arozamena.
The character of Count Dracula from the 1897 novel Dracula by Bram Stoker, has remained popular over the years, and many forms of media have adopted the character in various forms. In their book Dracula in Visual Media, authors John Edgar Browning and Caroline Joan S. Picart declared that no other horror character or vampire has been emulated more times than Count Dracula. Most variations of Dracula across film, comics, television and documentaries predominantly explore the character of Dracula as he was first portrayed in film, with only a few adapting Stoker's original narrative more closely. These including borrowing the look of Count Dracula in both the Universal's series of Dracula and Hammer's series of Dracula, including the character's clothing, mannerisms, physical features, hair style and his motivations such as wanting to be in a home away from Europe.
David John Skal was an American cultural historian, critic, writer, and on-camera commentator known for his research and analysis of horror films, horror history and horror culture.
Caroline Joan S. Picart is a Filipino-born American philosopher, who has written and edited numerous books and anthologies on philosophy film, law, criminology, sociology, communications, and cultural studies, especially horror film. She is also a lawyer and had a radio show, The Dr. Caroline (Kay) Picart Show. In 2011, she received the Lord Ruthven Award, non-fiction category, for the book Dracula in Visual Media Film, Television, Comic Book and Electronic Game Appearances, 1921-2010, co-authored with John Edgar Browning. Currently, she is an appeals attorney at the Florida 10th Judicial Circuit Public Defender's Office.
Urban Gothic is a sub-genre of Gothic fiction, film horror, and television dealing with industrial and post-industrial urban society. It was pioneered in the mid-19th century in Britain, Ireland, and the United States, before being developed in British novels such as Robert Louis Stevenson's Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886) and Irish novels such as Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890) and Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897). In the twentieth century, urban Gothic influenced the creation of the sub-genres of Southern Gothic and suburban Gothic. From the 1980s, interest in the urban Gothic was revived with books like Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles and a number of graphic novels that drew on dark city landscapes, leading to adaptations in film including Batman (1989), The Crow (1994) and From Hell (2001), as well as influencing films like Seven (1995).
Dacre Calder Stoker is the great grand-nephew of Bram Stoker and the international best-selling co-author of Dracula the Un-Dead (2009), and Dracul (2018). Dacre is also the co-editor of The Lost Journal of Bram Stoker: The Dublin Years (2012). Dacre is a native of Montreal, Canada, he taught Physical Education and Sciences for twenty-two years, in both Canada and the U.S. He also participated in the sport of Modern Pentathlon as an athlete and a coach at the international and Olympic levels for Canada for 12 years.
Dracula Lives! was an American black-and-white horror comics magazine published by Magazine Management, a corporate sibling of Marvel Comics. The series ran 13 issues and one Super Annual from 1973 to 1975, and starred the Marvel version of the literary vampire Dracula.
The Lord Ruthven Award is an annual award presented by the Lord Ruthven Assembly, a group of academic scholars specialising in vampire literature and affiliated with the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts (IAFA).
Robert Eighteen-Bisang was a Canadian author and scholar who was one of the world's foremost authorities on vampire literature and mythology.
Dracula is a film series of horror films from Universal Pictures based on the 1897 novel Dracula by Bram Stoker and its 1927 play adaptation. Film historians have had various interpretations over which projects constitute being in the film series; academics and historians finding narrative continuation between Dracula (1931) and Dracula's Daughter (1936), while holding varying opinions on whether Son of Dracula (1943), House of Frankenstein (1944) and House of Dracula (1945) are part of the series. Author and academic Gary Don Rhodes stated the all the mentioned films would require an audience to be familiar with Count Dracula, portrayed by Bela Lugosi, and the various character traits the actor established in the original 1931 film.
Bibliography of works on Dracula is a listing of non-fiction literary works about the book Dracula or derivative works about its titular vampire Count Dracula.
Dracula Sucks is a 1978 American pornographic horror film directed and co-written by Philip Marshak. The film is based on the 1931 film Dracula, and the 1897 novel of the same name by Bram Stoker. It stars Jamie Gillis as Count Dracula, a vampire who purchases an estate next to a mental institution. The film also stars Annette Haven, John Leslie, Serena, Reggie Nalder, Kay Parker, and John Holmes. An alternate cut of Dracula Sucks, titled Lust at First Bite, has also been released.