Jan L. Perkowski

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Jan L. Perkowski is originally from Perth Amboy, New Jersey, and is Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of Virginia. He has three consecutive degrees including a PhD from Harvard University. He currently resides in Charlottesville.

He attracted attention when he published research into alleged vampire folklore in the 1970s that was easily sensationalized in the press and has a vogue among vampire fans.

Perkowski was employed by the National Museum of Man in Canada in 1968-9 to conduct research for the Canadian Centre for Folk Culture Studies in the area of Wilno, Ontario, to study Kaszubian Polish folklore and traditions. His 1972 report, "Vampires, Dwarves, And Witches Among The Ontario Kashubs" inspired sensational articles in Psychology Today, The Canadian Magazine, and The National Enquirer which got it denounced on the floor of the Canadian House of Commons.

Perkowski was employed at the University of California, Santa Barbara; The University of Texas, Austin, TX, and is currently employed at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA. He plans on retiring from teaching by 2009.

In 1989, he published The Darkling: A Treatise on Slavic Vampirism which contains original vampire accounts translated into English from over twenty languages, many for the first time, including a vampire trial in Dubrovnik in 1737. The book is currently being added as a chapter in his forthcoming work Vampire Lore (2006).

Perkowski taught Slavic Languages, classes on the occult and vampires and courses such as "How to be a Spy." Currently, he teaches an undergraduate class at the University that details the mythology of vampires. The class is a survey of vampire mythology in western culture spanning ancient times to the present. Perkowski himself approaches the vampire as an outgrowth of the culture in which its legend arose - often more a morality tale than anything else. He also teaches graduate courses in Slavic Mythology, Russian Language, and diachronic linguistics. He is currently preparing to retire with plans to do so within two years, and his course on vampires has been temporarily taken on by his student Stanley J. Stepanic.

[edit] Publications

1969: A Kashubian Idiolect in the United States
1972: Vampires, Dwarves and Witches Among the Ontario Kashubs. Ottawa, Ontario, Canada : 1972
1976: Vampires of the Slavs. Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA : Slavica, 1976. ISBN 0-89357-026-5
1978: Gusle and Ganga Among the Hercegovinians of Toronto. Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA : University Microfilms International, 1978. ISBN 0-8357-0321-5
1982: "The Romanian Folkloric Vampire". East Europe Quarterly, September 1982. Reprinted in The Vampire: A Casebook, Alan Dundes, ed. (University of Wisconsin Press, 1998) ISBN 0-299-15924-8
1989: The Darkling: A Treatise on Slavic Vampirism. Columbus, Ohio, USA : Slavica, 1989. ISBN 0-89357-200-4 [1]
2000: Linguistic History Engraved in Gold and Silver: Legends on the Coins of St. Vladimir.