Lecture With the Vampire

Last semester all of my myth students wanted to write their essays on vampires, so today I gave my myth class a vampire lecture. Well, really, the lecture was on revenants -- people who return from the dead -- based on the folktale motif "The Bloodthirsty Revenant." I made my class read some stories about revenants in the Thousand and One Nights, which has lots of great stories about vampire women, haunted latrines, and ghouls who feast in a graveyard while they listen to terrible droning music (I've been to some similar parties). We had the liveliest discussion of the class so far. Students love the undead.