Description
Book SynopsisQueering the Vampire Narrative offers classroom-ready original essays that continue our explorations of vampires as representations of the cultural Other, which builds on the work of our previous texts. The editors argue, ultimately, the vampire is a queer icon, infinitely blurring the boundaries of identity and cultural norms and queering even the most seemingly stable notions, such as life, death, humanity, and monstrosity. The Vampire is the undead monarch of subtextual articulations of Otherness, especially queer behaviors and desires, offering explorations of the AIDS epidemic, the destabilization of ideas of fixed and stable sexuality, the search for community and chosen family, and the issues of individual and generational trauma. In current fictions, vampires are coming out of the coffin and the closet, identifying as openly queer and often created by queer writers, artists, and directors and bringing the subtext to the surface of the narrative. This volume seeks to create a dialogue about the impact and importance of the vampire on queer identity and queer theory and to answer the questions of why the vampire is such a compelling queer icon and what visions of vampires articulate about our ideas surrounding issues of sexuality, sexual orientation, sexual behaviors, and desires.
Table of ContentsAcknowledgements Notes on Contributors 1 Queer Vampires, Queering the Vampire, and the Transgressive Undead: An Introduction Amanda Jo Hobson and U. Melissa Anyiwo 2 Undyingly Queer: Cultural Context, Found Family, and the Eternal Unavoidable Queerness of the Vampire Jennifer Piper 3 Flipping the Script? Queering the Insider/Outsider Status of the Black Vampire Queen in Richard Wenk’s Vamp (1986) Kendra R. Parker 4 Gendered Fault Lines: Reproductive Politics in Poppy Z. Brite’s Lost Souls Hannah Hansen and Jennifer Lawn 5 The Monstrous Mother as Obstacle to Herd Immunity and Queer Community in American Horror Story: Hotel Leah Richards 6 “Love Will Have Its Sacrifices”: The Evolution of Lesbian Representation in Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla and Its Adaptations Alba María Fuentes Muñoz 7 “We’re Different to Others of Our Kind”: Meyer’s Vampires and the Complications of Heteronormativity Eleanor Miller 8 Fragments of Queerness and the Post-Modern: Family in Buffy the Vampire Slayer Brian M. Peters 9 The Irony That Kills Us: The (Un)life and Death of Possibility in Anne Rice’s The Vampire Chronicles D. Stachowiak 10 Escaping Capitalism and Toxic Masculinity through Vampiric Transformations in Vampire’s Kiss (1988) and Daybreakers (2009) Mary Beth McAndrews 11 To Be Young and a Man: Age and Emasculation in Tony Scott’s The Hunger Billy Tringali 12 The Argenti Beast Maurice Moore 13 Queering the Classroom U. Melissa Anyiwo and Amanda Jo Hobson
