Vampires
Be sure to check out my Vampires playlist on Spotify if you're looking for some fun pop tunes that give off that creature of the night vibe.
Or, choose from the four songs I listen to whenever I'm working on a Vampire project to help get in that gothic literature head space.
The Zoo
2023
As the Host and Producer of The Sedgwick County ZooCast, I had a lot of freedom when it came to episode topics. October's episode topic was a no brainer- Bats.
In this episode, we delved into Fruit Bats. And the game show segment of the game, "Sanguinarian Vegetarian" was obviously about vampires.
The Capstone
2022
For the entire 2021-2022 school year, I worked on my capstone project for the Honors College at Western Washington University. A senior project is the final graduation requirement for recognition or a minor in Honors. The project is an original, independently designed, concentrated work in a student’s major field or another field of interest.
For my capstone project, I interviewed vampires. The Vampire Tapes is a five part series consisting of conversations with individuals who identify with the term "vampiric."
The Magazine Spread
2021
In winter, 2021, the final assignment in my Editing class was to design a magazine spread. The prompt was to:
"Create a magazine spread featuring a single story and photos you find on your own. Edit one lengthy story and create accompanying elements to fill two to five facing 8.5 by 11-inch pages designed for publication in a magazine. Write and original headline (and deck) and create an original infographic that helps explain the story visually. No part of the story will be jumped to pages you have not laid out. Design the pages using what you have learned about visual hierarchy, balance, color, white space, fonts, and spacing."
I used "On Valentine's Day, we dare to ask it: why are vampires sexy?" written by Jim Beckerman for NorthJersey.com as the basis for my project.
The Reviews
2020
In spring 2020, I took a seminar called Arts Reporting and Criticism. Obviously, I needed to base some of my assignments on vampire centric media.
The prompt for our first assignment was to write about a page on a piece of media that was a cultural touchstone to us, a piece of media we find ourselves coming back to a lot. I chose to write about Interview with the Vampire
Later in the course we had to write a film review. I wrote about The Lost Boys. We also had to produce an audio recording of one of the reviews we had written, and I chose to record my film review.
The Website
2019
In spring of 2019, I was required to make a website based on the research project I had selected for my English 101 class. I had chosen to do my project on depictions of the vampire from the early 20th century to current day.
The website includes information on how the portrayal has changed over the years, as well as surveys which show how people perceive vampires in media. The website also has an interactive "choose your own adventure" section which shows how vampiric stories play out based on the tropes of different eras.
The Essay
2019
In early March of 2019, I was assigned an essay with only two requirements- it had to relate to a book we had read in class, and it had to be argumentative.
With such a vague prompt, I began to stress. Then I realized that Frankenstein, a book we had read in class, was an epistolary novel, similar to Interview with the Vampire, which I had just finished reading for fun.
My essay ended up being a comparison of various horror stories- the two aforementioned novels as well as Misery by Stephen King and some of Edgar Allan Poe's works- and an argument of which aspects of the stories lead to being the most effective in creating an atmosphere of horror and unease.