Vampires in the Classroom? Professor Marcia Morris' Ignatius Seminar
September 7, 2010
While fans of Twilight lined up to see the third installment of the movie series this summer, professor of Slavic Languages Marcia Morris was gearing up to teach her Ignatius Seminar students about vampires.
Although her class, "Shifting Selves: Changelings and Doubles" will focus upon how several different figures are represented in literature, including werewolves, doubles, pretenders and demons, Morris is interested in discussing with her students how a particular figure keeps cropping up in popular consciousness.
“I confess to being particularly excited about the vampires. The vampire figure rode a huge wave of popularity in the nineteenth century, and it is now riding a second one,” explained Morris. “One of the topics we will explore in the seminar is the relationship between ‘high’ and ‘pop’ culture. I anticipate that many of my students will have read a variety of vampire romances or seen recent vampire films, and since I have assigned Polidori’s The Vampyre as well as Bram Stoker’s Dracula, we will have ample material for comparisons between old and new on the one hand and high and popular on the other.”
Ignatius Seminars, instituted in 2006 at Georgetown College, give professors the opportunity to deviate from traditional curricula by focusing on a topic that is near their own professional research interests. Morris’ field is Russian literature, and until now she has taught Russian authors fairly exclusively. However, her own writing tends to be about the understanding of the self, and how that deviates in literature.
“All of my research ultimately focuses on literary edges and liminal boundaries: I explore the borders of the modern and the pre-modern, the popular and the literary, the literary and the historical,” Morris noted. “I’m particularly interested in authors, characters, and themes that are stuck in between, that are neither one thing nor the other.”
Morris’ interest in the literary manifestation of the in-between inspired her seminar, and she hopes that beginning undergraduate students who are themselves in transition will find the themes intriguing. “The exploration of self and its relationship to the Other lies—in my view, at least—at the very heart of a liberal education,” Morris said. “The college years offer students a unique opportunity to reflect on the interplay between individuals and their communities…‘Shifting Selves’ is meant to showcase the specific interpretive lens that the imaginative arts provide.”
Much of Morris’ most recent work focuses on contemporary Russian fiction by novelist Boris Akunin, who writes in the detective genre. “In all of these novels, Akunin plays with literary conventions and erases the borders between ‘high’ and ‘low’ fiction,” said Morris. “At the same time, he creates a gallery of protagonists who hide behind various masks and, as a result, often appear to be multiple people. In the end, however, the masks fall away and the protagonists each turn out to be less than a single, complete person.” Morris’ research interests tie in to her Ignatius Seminar as she notes that Akunin’s characters demonstrate, “once again, splitting and collapsing selves.”
The professor does not stop there, however. Morris is also working on a new book-length project, titled Bedeviled: Two Russian Tales in Variation. She is studying two late medieval Russian stories and the “modernized” twentieth-century adaptations of each by Russian émigré writer, Aleksei Remizov. “Both tales, The Tale of Savva Grudtsyn and The Tale of the Demoniac Solomonia, center on protagonists who fall afoul of devils,” noted Morris. “Savva Grudtsyn sells his soul in order to gain another self; as a result of his commerce with the devil he becomes a fearsome and famous warrior. Solomonia is possessed by demons and catastrophically loses her self altogether. Both the seventeenth-century originals and the twentieth-century re-writes are shot through with a keen sense of cultural anxiety, and their protagonists serve as metaphors for a nation cut away from its cultural moorings.” Morris explains that both stories were products of times of forced and brutal change. The seventeenth-century tales, she notes, were composed on the eve of Peter the Great’s modernization and “Europeanization” of Russia, while Remizov’s more current versions were written during what Morris calls the “Stalinist terror.”
Morris hopes that her sharing her own research interests, with their focus on understanding the human condition through literature, will help her students on their own intellectual paths. She notes, “a rich and varied academic program such as the one we offer at Georgetown College provides students with multiple lenses through which to focus their reflection and, as a result, encourages them to become well informed and active citizens.”
-Gabrielle Matthews
Photos, top right: Morris flashes her fangs. Left: a selection from Morris' library. Photos by Kuna Hamad.
