John Edgar Browning

Education & Teaching

Browning earned his B.A. from Florida State University and then his M.A. at the University of Central Oklahoma. He completed his doctoral coursework in English at Louisiana State University before transferring to American Studies at the University at Buffalo, The State University of New York (SUNY-Buffalo).

At SUNY-Buffalo, Browning received an Arthur A. Schomburg Fellowship in the Department of Transnational Studies. While there, Browning continued his doctoral studies and was an adjunct instructor in English. One of the courses Browning taught at SUNY-Buffalo was "A Cultural History of the Walking Dead," a fifteen-week course. The course drew on Richard Matheson's novel I Am Legend as well as the films of George Romero. At Georgia Tech, Browning has continued to teach on vampires, zombies, and monsters, adding to that list the Slasher in a course entitled, "The Slasher Film: Gender, Disability, and Transgression."

Doctoral dissertation

For part of his doctoral dissertation, Browning conducted, over a period of two years, an ethnographic study of people who self-identify as vampire in New Orleans. Browning's fieldnotes recount the experience: "On the eve of the second Tuesday of every month, I have become, to the watchful bystander, a familiar presence in the French Quarter. Flying through the dusky sky over Bourbon Street, as I strolled along casually, were fast, sweeping brown bats: An homage, maybe, to the business of interviewing vampires? To my side hung the trusty brown leather satchel that housed my pen and paper, and digital voice recorder. I left politely at home, of course, the crucifix I didn’t actually own, and the short wooden stake carved for me by an older brother when I was younger. For indeed the vampires with whom I was meeting tonight were not prisoners of lore and legend: theirs was a new lore, and they were becoming very quickly their own legend." Browning extended his ethnographic fieldwork to include real vampires living in Buffalo, NY.

For an op-ed in Deep South Magazine entitled Conversations with Real Vampires, Browning's notes further recount the experience: "We are meeting an hour later than usual for the third month in a row, because the sun, during the summer months, sets closer to 9 instead of 8. Tonight, I will ask for the first time if I can watch them feed.” Browning has more recently elaborated on his experiences in Palgrave Communications, The Conversation UK, Discover (magazine) and The Atlantic.

TV appearances

As author

As contributing author

As editor