It's been a long hiatus from this reading diary. I was named Katzin term chair in Judaic Studies at UCSD and have been busy as a part of the UCSD Judaic Studies program and working on my book project on the Wandering Jew legend, "The Once and Future Jew: Temporality, Antisemitism and the Wandering Jew" and developing new courses, including "Comparative US Ethnic Literature: Literary Responses to Trauma" which focuses on works that are responses to war, slavery and genocide linked through a use of the supernatural and also "Antisemitism in English Literature" which spans from the medieval period to the 20th century. The latter course is happening this quarter and it looks like I have a great bunch of students.
The same goes for my Vampires in Literature course, which I'm very excited to return to. This means I'll have the chance to return to vampire literature and inspires me to write about what I'm reading as well as teach it. Wednesday we begin with the origins of the Vampire legend, including selections from the extremely informative book by Paul Barber, Vampires, Burial and Death, which explains how the legend spread to Western Europe in the 1700s and also examines the possible medical and scientific explanations behind the legends.