Eight hundred years before Bram Stoker gave us the West's most memorable vampire in Dracula (1897) and long before the exploits of Vlad "the Impaler" Tepes horrified Europe (1431-46),the Russian Primary Chronicles write of a Novgorodian priest as Upyr' Likhij, or Wicked Vampire (1047). The Slavic and Balkan worlds abound in histories, legends, myths and literary portraits of the so-called undead, creatures which draw life out of the living in order to sustain their own. These stories of the vampire simultaneously fascinate and horrify, as they draw the reader closer to an understanding of death and the undead. This unique volume brings together a wide variety of historical, critical, and literary texts that reveal and explore the origins, growth, and development of the vampire myth from its beginnings to the 21st century. These texts explore the vampire within the region of its origin in Western cultures: the lands of the Balkans, Eastern Europe and Russia. From the earliest recorded tales to the recent offerings of Russian vampires on film, this volume gives the reader a dynamic perspective on one the world's most enduring cultural phenomena, the vampire. Thomas Garza, Ed.D., is University Distinguished Teaching Associate Professor of Slavic and Eurasian Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. He teaches courses on Russian language and literature, foreign language pedagogy, and contemporary Russian culture. His popular course, “The Vampire in Slavic Cultures,” has been taught since 1997. He has been traveling to and researching in Russia since 1979 and has lived in Moscow for over six years. A native Texan, Dr. Garza received his doctorate in education from Harvard University in 1987. During his eighteen-year tenure at the University, he has received several prizes for undergraduate teaching, including the Texas Excellence Award, the President's Associates Award, the Harry Ransom Award, and in 2003 was inducted into the university-wide Academy of Distinguished Teachers. His current research projects examine the attitudes of Russian youth toward the Chechen war and conscription, and notions of masculinity and ‘machismo’ in Mexican and Russian film of the late ‘90s and 2000s.