I know my December guest blog period is over, but end-of-semester grading and holiday travel got the best of me!  I wanted to submit one more entry--a description and text list of a graduate seminar I taught on vampire literature--and ask for comments and suggestions for teaching this course in the future.  Thank you!  Course Title: Vampire Literature of the African Diaspora Description:  "Soucouyant go' come for you"-- this phrase chills Caribbean children raised on the folk stories of a diabolical creature who appears as an old, wrinkled woman

There are many different ideas about the origins of the folk figure and the name.  The word “soucouyant” is sometimes said to be a French or patois/creole derivation of the English verb “to suck.” Trinidadian folklore collector Gérard Besson cites folklorist Ursula Raymond, who argued that the term comes from the French words for "suspicion"—soupçon/soupçonner/soupçonneux (i.e. suspecting of a person of being a witch).  Trinidadian linguist Maureen Warner-Lewis traces the name back to the Fula/Soninke words s

When I was a little girl, several of my female relatives regaled me with tales of vampiric soucouyant. This figure from Trinidadian folklore is an old woman by day.  At night, she sheds her skin and transforms into a ball of fire to move from house to house.  She sneaks through cracks and keyholes to suck the blood or “life-blood”--the human soul, or essence--of her neighbors.  Protection can be gained by scattering rice or salt on doorsteps, windowsills, or around the beds of potential victims:  the soucouyant must count every grain before leaving, and thu