"Soucouyants and Sleep Paralysis: How Folklore and Fiction Help Us Understand Illness"
Thursday, March 20, 2025 4:30pm to 6pm
About this Event
Devlin Hall, Chestnut Hill, MA 02467
https://www.bc.edu/content/bc-web/schools/morrissey/sites/aadsAFRICAN AND AFRICAN DIASPORA STUDIES PROGRAM
2024-2025 NEW DIRECTIONS LECTURE SERIES:
GISELLE ANATOL
UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS
Anatol’s 2015 book, The Things That Fly in the Night: Female Vampires in Literature of the Circum-Caribbean and African Diaspora (2015), explored the power of the soucouyant--a frightening figure from Trinidadian folklore who sheds her skin, turns into a ball of fire, and sucks the blood of her neighbors. Stories about this creature and other incarnations of Black female vampires reveal cultural anxieties about women’s sexual agency and desires to deviate from expected roles, like wife and mother. In this talk, Anatol will extrapolate from her earlier work to consider several recent examples of literature that employ the skin-shedding, bloodsucking figure to challenge readers to look beyond traditional touchstones of monstrosity and horror, as well as to consider the value of the humanities when approaching science and medicine.
Giselle Anatol is a Professor in the Department of English and director of the Hall Center for Humanities at Kansas University. She specializes in Caribbean, U.S. African American, and multicultural American literature, as well as works for young readers.