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Todd and Melissa Powell-Williams

He’s gregarious, talking out ideas the instant they enter his consciousness. She’s measured, carefully choosing words and pacing their cadence. Together they share curiosity about the cultural expression and interpretation of vampires. Todd and Melissa Powell-Williams, associate professors of sociology at Augusta State University, arrived in Augusta in August 2008, with their now 2-year-old son, Miles, a package deal for the sociology department. 
Todd and Melissa don’t consume vampire lore in the same way the rest of America devours it, engrossed in the Twilight books and movies, the Sookie Stackhouse novels, and the HBO series, TrueBlood. Todd’s primary research interest is in sociology of religion, while Melissa’s area of specialty involves emotion management and display rules. But as Todd explains, both professors embrace popular culture, particularly the current vampire trend, as a way of connecting with their students. “I’m keeping an informal folder of data,” says Todd.
 “The whole vampire genre got started in the 1800s in Western Europe, but borrowed from Eastern European folklore,” says Todd. The most notable example of course is Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel, Dracula. Vampires have entertained imaginations since. “Throughout the whole vast shadowy world of ghosts and demons there is no figure so terrible, no figure so dreaded and abhorred, yet the cause of such fearful fascination as the vampire,” reads the first line of Montague Summers’s The Vampire: His Kith and Kin (1928). Enthrallment still pervades today, probably because, as Melissa says, “There’s really no other supernatural being that is attractive. Vampires are always written to have a higher standard of style, grace and finesse.”
Each giving a nod to Count Chocula, of the General Mills cereal, and Count von Count, of Sesame Street fame, Todd and Melissa acknowledge the strong foothold of vampires in popular culture.
The duo concurs that teens and young adults generally drive the present market trend in vampire films and books, not to say that consumers in other age brackets haven’t contributed. Several characteristics of vampires keep consumers intrigued: immortality, supernatural strength that doesn’t have to be explained, a flawed, brooding character who will always possess youthful beauty, male-female themes of dependence and protection. Todd also adds, “It’s an escape from reality into fantasy.” 
Even so, the evolving myth of the vampire often reflects reality. Making reference to Karl Marx’s use of the vampire as a metaphor for capitalism, Todd notes, “It’s interesting that this upsurge comes at the same time as an economic downtown.” With America’s unemployment rates soaring, Marx’s statement, “Capital...vampire-like, lives only by sucking living labor...” resonates with Todd. The coalescence of vampire legend, political ideology and current events is unmistakable. Melissa takes a different tack, saying, “The evolution of the vampire as we interpret him reflects current social trends in relation to the normative and the deviant. What is interesting about the vampire phenomenon is that as we have evolved as a society the vampire’s interactions with the human world have evolved.” 
Melissa predicts a coming lull in the vampire fad. Market saturation and rising consumer expectations will lay the vampire trend to rest in the coffin of the public’s imagination for a period. Meanwhile, Melissa will launch her Ghost Hunters project and Todd will complete his book on Westboro Baptist Church. They will continue to teach sociology classes at ASU and to enjoy living in the Augusta community they’ve grown to love. Behind the scenes, however, they’ll continue to fill their files with vampire data, prepared for the next vampire awakening.