“My Wild Heart Bleeds” Carmilla Conference Rundown

This past weekend I attended “‘My Wild Heart Bleeds’: 150 Years of Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla,” an online conference organized by Romancing the Gothic. If you’ve been following my blog, you may have seen me mention Romancing the Gothic (RtG) in some of my book reviews and year-end wrap-ups over the past couple of years. RtG is an online education project that was started by Dr. Sam Hirst at the beginning of the pandemic and brings together scholars and enthusiasts alike from all over the world to share our love for and deepen our understanding of Gothic, romance, and horror literature and other media. RtG offers free weekly lectures and book club meetings over Zoom, and last year they organized their first academic conference: “‘My Poor Devil’: Georgette Heyer’s The Black Moth at 100.” This year, our conference was themed around another literary milestone—the 150th anniversary of the publication of the vampire novella Carmilla. 

Carmilla is an early work of vampire fiction written by Irish writer Sheridan Le Fanu. It was serialized in The Dark Blue magazine from 1871 to 1872 and first published in its entirety as part of Le Fanu’s 1872 collection In a Glass Darkly. I read Carmilla for the first time via a lovely illustrated edition in 2015 and reviewed it in the early days of this blog. But this conference is making me want to do a reread soon! The novella’s titular character is one of the earliest and best known female vampires in English literature, and the story is also recognized for its strong sapphic overtones in the depiction of the relationship between Carmilla and her companion/victim Laura.

The “My Wild Heart Bleeds” conference celebrates this legacy through panels, keynotes, and activities that center on Carmilla and other female or queer vampires in literature and media. The conference was fully online and took place over Zoom on September 3 and 4, with events spread out throughout the weekend to try to be accessible to as many time zones as possible. The content was well-suited to this online format, and conference volunteers cleverly dubbed “familiars” helped to keep everything running smoothly. The conference featured two keynote speakers: Gina Wisker, who set the tone for the weekend with “Women and Vampire Fictions,” and Aoife Dempsey, who spoke on “Folklore and Fairytale in Carmilla and Beyond.” Much of the rest of the weekend consisted of scholars giving short presentations of academic papers that were organized into themed panels on topics such as Latin American vampires, queer reimaginings, and vampires in games. Other programming included an author roundtable, a vampire soiree, a cooking demonstration, and a writing/gaming workshop. Alas, I didn’t get to attend all of this amazing programming live, thanks to time zone differences and other conflicts, but I’m looking forward to catching the recordings of the content that I missed!

I want to highlight some of my favorite parts from the programming that I did get to attend live. I particularly enjoyed Saturday’s panel on Queer Reimaginings, especially Kristen Tollen’s presentation on the Carmilla web series and how it intentionally avoids the “bury your gays” trope that pervades other media featuring queer characters and queer relationships. I first watched the Carmilla web series right after reading the book for the first time, so it’s very tied up in my initial experience of Carmilla’s story. I’m not sure I ever finished the series, though, and I had no idea about the immense fandom that has grown around it and the other creative works it has spawned, from fanart to a novelization of the web series. This presentation made me want to dive back in and watch the series all over again. In addition to adding to my “to watch” list, I now have several new books and short stories to add to my TBR pile, thanks to Saturday’s author roundtable on “Reimagining the Female Vampire,” featuring Zen Cho, Hailey Piper, and S. D. Simper. The RtG book club had read a vampire story by each author in the weeks leading up to the conference, but I hadn’t been able to keep up. After listening to these authors share their thoughts on female vampires and the genre as a whole, though, I can’t wait to dive into Zen Cho’s “House of Aunts,” Hailey Piper’s “Queen of the Cloven Heart,” and S. D. Simper’s Carmilla and Laura. 

But I have to say my favorite part of the conference was the activity I hosted! I was given charge of the vampire soiree—a chance for conference attendees to relax with a beverage and debrief after the first day of programming. Social activities like this are always particularly challenging to host over Zoom, but most of the folks in this crowd are veterans of video chats and it wound up being a ton of fun! Many of the attendees dressed in their vampiric best and were eager to show off and talk about the outfits they had put together. I demonstrated how to make two themed beverages—the non-alcoholic Carmilla’s Cordial and a cocktail called Laura’s Wounded Heart—while attendees followed along or made their own drink of choice. Then we settled in to chat about our favorite part of the day’s programming, what we were looking forward to on Sunday, and our dreams of traveling around the world to meet up with other RtG members in-person and go on Gothic pilgrimages to sites like the Yorkshire Moors, Bran Castle, and historic cemeteries.

After not being as active with RtG lately due to my new job, it felt wonderful to spend a weekend immersing myself in brilliant scholarship around one of my favorite works of literature with these folks! If you, like me, miss the classroom experience of reading books together as a group and learning about them from experts in the field, I highly recommend checking out Romancing the Gothic and getting involved. And if this conference sounds like fun, be sure to stay tuned for more information about next year’s conference on witchcraft and the supernatural! Did you attend “My Wild Heart Bleeds” over the weekend? If so, let me know your favorite part in the comments.