Teaching Dracula Interculturally: From Gothic Otherness to Intercultural Agency Through Student Podcasts

Beatriz Peña Dix, Universidad de los Andes, Bogotá, Colombia

Why Dracula, Why Interculturality

In my undergraduate English seminar An Intercultural Reading of Dracula (LENG 3125, Universidad de los Andes, Bogotá, Colombia), I teach Bram Stoker’s Dracula not only as a canonical Gothic novel, but as an intercultural encounter staged through language. The course begins with a simple, unsettling premise: the Count is written as the foreigner, the threatening Other, and the novel repeatedly frames difference as disease, contamination, invasion, and moral decay. Yet the text also invites readers to look more carefully and to ask what is familiar inside what appears monstrous and what the “civilized” self becomes when confronted with Otherness.

For this reason, the course treats intercultural reading as a pedagogical stance rather than a checklist of skills. Intercultural agency is not something students can master once and for all; that is why I work with the idea of interculturalities in the plural (Peña Dix, 2025). This shift resists standardized models and foregrounds the dynamic, unequal, and context-bound processes through which people become intercultural. Learning, in this sense, is less about acquiring a toolkit and more about practicing critical self-reflection, negotiating multiple perspectives, and recognizing how cultural encounters are shaped by histories of power and representation (Dervin, 2022).

In the classroom, this translates into reading not only for difference but for how difference is constructed and valued. Students engage with multiple semiotic repertoires—language, narrative voice, gesture, symbolism—and examine how these resources determine who is heard, who belongs, and who is marked as excessive or dangerous. For my students, advanced English users (B2+ to C1), the aim is not to study Victorian England as a distant artifact or as a museum, but to explore how language produces belonging and exclusion, and how readers can respond ethically when a text invites them to fear the Other.

I frame intercultural reading as an active process of noticing, interpreting, and negotiating meaning instead of consuming the “right” interpretation. In that sense, intercultural awareness is not a single outcome; it is an ongoing sensitivity to how difference is narrated, evaluated, and normalized. In practice, this meant moving beyond plot comprehension into questions of voice, power, and cultural legitimacy: Who gets to be complex? Who is reduced to a symbol? Which forms of difference are tolerated, and which are framed as existential threats?

This Is Not a Literature Class Only: Reading as Intercultural Practice

The course combines three threads: content-based language learning, extensive reading, and intercultural analysis. Students read large portions of the novel fluently, then return to selected passages for slow reading and guided discussion. I use the epistolary structure to foreground mediation: letters, diaries, and newspaper fragments are not neutral containers of truth; they are situated accounts that persuade, justify, and sometimes erase. In practical terms, students annotate who speaks, who is quoted, and whose experiences are treated as evidence. Once they begin tracking voice and authority, reading shifts from plot consumption to intercultural interpretation.

Early in the semester, we build a shared working vocabulary for intercultural discussion: interculturality, intercultural dialogue, mediation, and agency. I present intercultural agency as the capacity to act reflexively and ethically in intercultural encounters, recognizing that identities and meanings are negotiated and not fixed. Students apply this immediately: in small groups, they identify moments when they instinctively side with the English protagonists, accept Dracula as pure threat, or treat the East/West binary as natural and transform those reactions into deliberate opportunities for critical reading.

A turning point often occurs when students recognize that Victorian anxieties about borders, sexuality, religion, and degeneration echo contemporary debates about migration and belonging. At that moment, Dracula stops being historical distance and becomes a mirror. Students begin to see that the novel does not simply represent Otherness; it trains readers to react to it in specific ways.

Podcasting as a Bridge: From Analysis to Agency

To move from interpretation to action, I introduced a structured podcast project. The assignment unfolded in four stages:

Stage 1: Textual mapping.
Groups selected a character or theme from Chapters 17–27 and created a visual map of how the text frames that figure: adjectives used, narrative voice, moral judgments, and symbolic language. This forced close reading before interpretation.

Stage 2: Intercultural framing.
Students connected their map to intercultural concepts discussed in class. Instead of asking “What happens?” they asked: What kind of foreignness is acceptable here? Who is allowed complexity? Who becomes a symbol?

Stage 3: Script writing.
Groups wrote a short script designed for listeners unfamiliar with the novel. They had to translate literary analysis into spoken language without oversimplifying it. This is where intercultural mediation became visible: they negotiated tone, evidence, and audience awareness.

Stage 4: Recording and reflection.
After recording, groups submitted a brief reflection explaining what they chose to emphasize and why. Many noted that speaking forced them to clarify positions they had only vaguely held while writing.

Podcasting changed the social conditions of reading. Students were no longer producing work only for evaluation; they were shaping a public voice. When students imagine an audience, they become accountable for nuance. They begin to balance persuasion with complexity, a core element of intercultural mediation (Byram, 2009).

The most compelling episodes did not treat interculturality as vocabulary. Instead, they named tensions inside the novel: cooperation across difference, fear of contamination, and the limits of inclusion. One group focused on Quincy Morris as opposed to Count Dracula, the American in the vampire-hunting circle, and posed a deceptively simple question: Why does an “acceptable outsider” become the final martyr?

What Students Said: Moments of Intercultural Sensibility

As an example, I draw on Karin and Sofía’s podcast, shared here with their consent. The episode opened theatrically, inviting listeners into Gothic suspense before pivoting to analysis. The students described Count Dracula as a figure constructed through excess and threat, a presence that the narrative refuses to humanize in the way it does with Morris. For them, Morris feels readable and trustworthy because the text aligns him with familiar values while Dracula is framed as an embodiment of everything that must remain outside the social order. They noted that the novel invites sympathy for Morris but demands fear of Dracula, revealing how the story teaches readers which kinds of foreignness can be embraced and which must be eliminated. Karin and Sofia described Quincy as “quietly compelling” because he speaks little but acts decisively. Then came the interpretive move:

“He’s informal, spontaneous, action-oriented… Though not British, he represents values Victorians admire: honor, courage, masculinity.” The students were identifying how the novel constructs safe difference. Quincy’s foreignness becomes refreshing rather than threatening. They immediately pushed the question further:

“What makes Quincy’s foreignness acceptable? Race? Geography? Or shared Western values?”

That moment marked a shift from description to interrogation. Inclusion, they recognized, is conditional. Belonging is negotiated, not neutral.

Later, they directly contrasted Quincy with Dracula:

“He is framed as acceptable because… he shares Christianity, chivalry, and rational bravery.”

Whether or not every phrasing was perfect, the awareness was unmistakable: the novel organizes a cultural hierarchy. The East is coded as excessive and dangerous; Western identity becomes the invisible norm.

The students returned to the ethical dimension:

“His presence is tolerated, even honored, but ultimately erased with his death. True intercultural exchange isn’t just about cooperation. It’s about recognition and space to exist beyond differences.”

This line captured the assignment’s purpose. The students were not celebrating harmony; they were naming the politics of inclusion. They moved from literary analysis to intercultural positioning.

The podcast also highlighted how the narrative distributes emotional trust. As Karin observed, “We’re guided to feel safe when Morris enters a scene, even before he does anything heroic.” Sofía added that Dracula, by contrast, “never gets that emotional invitation,” suggesting that the novel pre-structures the reader’s sympathies. Their interpretation revealed awareness that the text is not neutral; it shapes reader response.

At another point, the students reflected on sacrifice. They noted that Morris’s death feels meaningful because it restores order, but that restoration depends on removing the outsider who helped achieve it. In their words, “He proves he belongs by giving everything, but belonging still has a limit.” This comment demonstrated their growing sensitivity to how inclusion can be conditional and temporary.

Finally, they questioned the idea of victory itself. They did not celebrate Dracula’s defeat, they wondered what kind of social stability is being protected. As Karin put it, “The ending feels calm, but it’s a calm built on exclusion.” That observation shifted the conversation from plot resolution to ethical consequence, showing how students were learning to read the novel not only as Gothic entertainment but as a cultural script about who is allowed to remain inside the circle of humanity.

What I Learned as a Teacher

Three lessons emerged from this classroom experience:

First, intercultural reading becomes concrete when students anchor claims in textual evidence. Podcasting required them to cite moments, not general feelings.

Second, voice matters. When students are allowed to sound like themselves—curious, uncertain, occasionally humorous—they take interpretive risks. That risk-taking is intercultural agency in practice because it positions oneself while remaining accountable to others.

Third, Gothic literature provides productive distance. Fear and exaggeration create a space where difficult themes—race, sexuality, colonial power—can be analyzed without immediate defensiveness. The genre stages moral panic in a way students can unpack.

A Closing Invitation

Teaching Dracula interculturally is not about redeeming the Count. It is about helping students notice how language produces strangers and how narratives justify exclusion, then inviting them to respond with care, discomfort, and critical clarity. An intercultural reading of a Gothic classic becomes a contemporary exercise that trains readers not only to understand texts, but to question the cultural systems that decide whose lives appear human and whose appear monstrous.

Beatriz Peña Dix is an Associate Professor in the Department of Languages and Culture at Universidad de los Andes (Bogotá, Colombia). Her teaching and research focus on intercultural communication education, critical language pedagogy, and literature as a site for intercultural analysis and ethical reflection.

References:

Baker, W. (2024). Intercultural communication and English language teaching. ELT Journal, 78(1), 3–12. 

Byram, M. (1997). Teaching and assessing intercultural communicative competence. Multilingual Matters.

Byram, M. (2008). From foreign language education to education for intercultural citizenship. Multilingual Matters.

Hoff, H. E. (2020). Intercultural competence in language teaching: Bridging theory and practice. Routledge. UNESCO. (2022). Global citizenship education: Topics and learning objectives. UNESCO Publishing.

UNESCO. (2022). Global citizenship education: Topics and learning objectives. UNESCO Publishing.