Gender in the Vampire Narrative addresses issues of masculinity and femininity, unpacking cultural norms of gender. This collection demonstrates the way that representations of gender in the vampire narrative traverse a large scope of expectations and tropes. The text offers classroom ready original essays that outline contemporary debates about sexual objectification and gender norms using the lens of the vampire in order to examine the ways those roles are undone and reinforced through popular culture through a specific emphasis on cultural fears and anxieties about gender roles. The essays explore the presentations of gendered identities in a wide variety of sources including novels, films, graphic novels and more, focusing on wildly popular examples, such as The Vampire Diaries, True Blood, and Twilight, and also lesser known works, for instance, Byzantium and The Blood of the Vampire. The authors work to unravel the ties that bind gender to the body and the sociocultural institutions that shape our views of gendered norms and invite students of all levels to engage in interdisciplinary conversations about both theoretical and embodied constructions of gender. This text makes a fascinating accompanying text for many courses, such as first-year studies, literature, film, women’s and gender studies, sociology, popular culture or media studies, cultural studies, American studies or history. Ultimately this is a text for all fans of popular culture. “Hobson and Anyiwo chase the vampire through history and across literature, film, television, and stage, exploring this complexity and offering insightful and accessible analyses that will be enjoyed by students in popular culture, gender studies, and speculative fiction. This collection is not to be missed by those with an interest in feminist cultural studies – or the undead.” – Barbara Gurr, University of Connecticut “Hobson and Anyiwo push the boundaries of the scholarship as it has been written until now.” –Catherine Coker, Texas A&M University Amanda Hobson is Assistant Dean of Students and Director of the Women’s Resource Center at Indiana State University. U. Melissa Anyiwo is a Professor of Politics & History and Coordinator of African American Studies at Curry College in Massachusetts.

A whirlwind romance between an eccentric archivist and a grieving widow explores what it means to be at home in your own body in this clever, humorous, and heartfelt novel. When archivist Sol meets Elsie, the larger than life widow of a moderately famous television writer who's come to donate her wife's papers, there's an instant spark. But Sol has a secret: he suffers from an illness called vampirism, and hides from the sun by living in his basement office. On their way to falling in love, the two traverse grief, delve into the Internet fandom they once unknowingly shared, and navigate the realities of transphobia and the stigmas of carrying the "vampire disease." Then, when strange things start happening at the collection, Sol must embrace even more of the unknown to save himself and his job. DEAD COLLECTIONS is a wry novel full of heart and empathy, that celebrates the journey, the difficulties and joys, in finding love and comfort within our own bodies.

The media vampire has roots throughout the world, far beyond the shores of the usual Dracula-inspired Anglo-American archetypes. Depending on text and context, the vampire is a figure of anxiety and comfort, humor and fear, desire and revulsion. These dichotomies gesture the enduring prevalence of the vampire in mass culture; it can no longer articulate a single feeling or response, bound by time and geography, but is many things to many people. With a global perspective, this collection of essays offers something new and different: a much needed counter-narrative of the vampire's evolution in popular culture. Divided by geography, this text emphasizes the vampiric as a globetrotting citizen du monde rather than an isolated monster.

Race in the Vampire Narrative unpacks the vampire through a collection of classroom ready original essays that explicitly connect this archetypal outsider to studies in race, ethnicity, and identity. Through essays about the first recorded vampire craze, television shows True Blood, and Being Human, movies like Blade: Trinity and Underworld, to the presentation of vampires of colour in romance novels, graphic novels, on stage and beyond, this text will open doorways to discussions about Otherness in any setting, serving as an alternative way to explore marginality through a framework that welcomes all students into the conversation.

When Anthony Pennell received the Baroness's invitation, penned in the delicate foreign handwriting of Harriet Brandt, he accepted it at once. Being out of the season, he had no engagement for that evening, but he would have broken twenty engagements, sooner than miss the chance, so unexpectedly offered him, of meeting in an intimate family circle, the girl who appeared to have led his cousin Ralph's fancy astray. He pictured her to himself as a whitey-brown young woman with thick lips and rolling eyes, and how Ralph, who was so daintily particular where the beau sexe was concerned, could have been attracted by such a specimen, puzzled Anthony altogether. The knowledge that she had money struck him unpleasantly, for he could think of no other motive for Captain Pullen having philandered with her, as he evidently had done. At anyrate, the idea that there was the least chance of allying herself with their family, must be put out of her head, at once and for ever.

This book critically situates the figure of the black female vampire within literary studies, cultural studies, gender studies, and critical race studies. It invites readers to take a closer look at the black female vampire figure and how that figure shapes and is shaped by cultural narratives about African American womanhood.

From the moment he knows that he is destined to be a vampire, Chris thirsts for the blood of people around him while also struggling to remain human.