Welsh Publishes Article on Movie Monster: 'Dracula Bites!'

SALISBURY, MD---Dr. James Welsh, an English professor at Salisbury University and editor of SU’s journal, Literature/Film Quarterly, has written an essay entitled “Dracula Sucks! Or, Why Francis Ford Coppola’s Dracula Is Not Really Bram Stoker's Dracula or Even Wallachia’s Dracula.”

The essay, published by Universitas XXI in Romania, concerns the misnaming of Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula and argues a faulty film interpretation. Welsh suggests that Coppola builds a love story out of the historical context of Romania’s Vlad the Impaler, an element not found in Stoker’s novel.

Welsh, who wrote the essay for a conference in Romania in March 2001, considers the novel, now a Romanian cultural and economic centerpiece, to be a great piece of 19th century Gothic fiction but not, as Coppola’s version implies, an accurate reflection of Romanian history. He argues that Romania’s heritage is far richer than modern stereotypes suggest. 

An international authority on literature-to-film adaptation, Welsh is a Fulbright Lector in American Studies in Romania. Last summer, he was the keynote speaker at the annual conference of the Edith Wharton Society in London, and he read a paper at the University of Leicester.

The essay is included in a collection entitled Living In-between and On Borders: Constructions of Gender, Ethnicity, Race, Class and Sexuality Over the Centuries.

For more information call 410-543-6030 or visit the SU Web site at www.salisbury.edu.