OUT NOW: The Modern Vampire and Human Identity (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013)

Edited by Deborah Mutch

Blurb: Why are we surrounded by vampires in the twenty-first century? From the global phenomena of Stephenie Meyer's Twilight and Charlaine Harris's Sookie Stackhouse, through films such as Underworld and Blade, television series such as the The Vampire Diaries and Being Human, to video games like Bloodrayne and Legacy of Kain, the reader, viewer and player has never had so many vampires to choose from. This collection considers the importance of the current flurry of vampires for our sense of human identity. Vampires have long been read as bodies through which our sense of ourselves has been reflected back to us. These essays offer readings of the modern vampire as a complex consideration of our modern human selves. Now that we no longer see the vampire as essentially evil, what does that say about us.

Editor: Deborah Mutch is a senior lecturer at De Montfort University, Leicester, UK. She has recently become interested in the modern Gothic and has published an article on the Twilight and Sookie Stackhouse series in Critical Survey. She has also published widely on fin-de-siecle British socialist fiction.

Contents:

1. Blood, Bodies, Books: Kim Newman and the Vampire as Cultural Text by Keith Scott
2. Buffy vs. Bella: Gender, Relationships and the Modern Vampire by Bethan Jones
3. 'Hell! Was I Becoming a Vampyre Slut?': Sex, Sexuality and Morality in Young Adult Vampire Fiction by Hannah Priest
4. Consuming Clothes and Dressing Desire in the Twilight Series by Sarah Heaton
5. Whiteness, Vampires and Humanity in Contemporary Film and Television by Ewan Kirkland
6. The Vampiric Diaspora: The Complications of Victimhood and Post-memory as Configured in the Jewish Migrant Vampire by Simon Bacon
7. Vampires and Gentiles: Jews, Mormons and Embracing the Other by Clare Reed
8. Transcending the Massacre: Vampire Mormons in the Twilight Series by Yael Maurer
9. The Gothic Louisiana of Charlaine Harris and Anne Rice by Victoria Amador
10. Matt Haig's The Radleys: Vampires for the Neoliberal Age by Deborah Mutch

CFP: The Monster Inside Us, The Monsters Around Us: Monstrosity and Humanity

A three-day conference

De Montfort University, Leicester, UK

In association with the Centre for Adaptation

18-20 November 2011

Keynote speakers: David Punter, University of Bristol, Andy Mousley, De Montfort University

From the 12th-century Old French mostre, meaning prodigy or marvel, the general use of the word 'monster' has been derogatory: something large, gross, malformed or abnormal. The monstrous creates fear and loathing, and includes difference through race, culture, society, ideology, psychology and many other Others. This fear is not produced by something alien but by the recognition of ourselves in the Other. In his introduction to Cogito and the Unconscious, Slavoj Zizek argues that the Cartesian subject has at its heart the monster which emerges when deprived of the 'wealth of self-experience'. The ease by which the border between 'human' and 'monster' is transgressed has long been debated in literature, both nineteenth-century Flora Bannerworth in Varney the Vampire and twenty-first-century Sookie Stackhouse recognise the human origins of the vampire. At the heart of the monster is the human; at the heart of the human is the monster.

This conference seeks to understand the relationship between the human and the monstrous across the centuries and across disciplines. In what ways and to what ends have the human and the monster been defined and polarised? How has the monster been subdued, and with what success? How do definitions and separations of the human and the monstrous change and through what pressures and motivations? How does the emerging field of posthumanism enable us to conceptualise the monstrous in relation to the human and humanism?

Proposals are invited for 20-minute papers which may address, but are not limited to:

• Monstrosity in the humanities
• The monster and criminality
• Psychology and the monster
• Monstrosity and the internet
• The human and the monster in the post-national world
• Monstrosity and miscegenation
• Liminality and transgression
• Theories of monstrosity and/or the human
• Historical monsters
• Humanism, the post-human and monstrosity

Please send abstracts of 300 words to Dr Deborah Mutch, Department of English, Clephan Buildng, De Montfort University, Leicester, LE1 9BH, or email Deborah Mutch.

Deadline for abstracts: 1 June 2011

De Montfort Vampire Conference - Schedule and Registration now available

Last month I posted details of the Vegetarians, VILFs and Fangbangers Conference at De Montfort University, to be held on 24th November 2010.

The conference schedule is now available, and you can register online for the event. Click here for more details.

The programme looks amazing, and there are a lot of papers to choose from. The day begins with a plenary address from Nickianne Moody (Liverpool John Moores University), on 'Interview with the Postfeminist: Researching the Paranormal Romance'. My own paper is entitled 'What's the Difference Between a Vampire and a Fairy': Supernatural Lovers in Young Adult Urban Fantasy'.

Hope to see some of you there!

Vegetarians, VILFs and Fang-Bangers: Modern Vampire Romance in print and on screen

A one day conference, De Montfort University, Leicester, UK

Wednesday 24 November 2010

Keynote Speaker: Dr Nickianne Moody, Liverpool John Moores University

Vampites have had a long and complex relationship with human beings and have been threatening and attracting us through folklore, literature, film and television for centuries. But now they walk among us, seeking to integrate themselves into our culture, to be our business partners, friends and lovers.

Why do we now prefer our vampires with a sensitive nature or with their ruthlessness focused on business deals? How does this change affect the relationship between both species and genders?

This one-day conference seeks to understand and criticise the phenomenal popularity of what is sometimes termed Dark Romance.

Papers are sought on authors such as Stephanie Meyer, Charlene Harris, and Lauren K. Hamilton, the adaptation of Dark Romance books for both film and TV and a general consideration of the change in our relationship with the vampire.

Proposals are invited for 20-minute papers, which might address (though not exclusively) the following areas:

• 21st-century vampires in the Gothic literary tradition
• Vampires and gender/relations
• Adaptation and the shift of audience
• Debates on the Other
• Difference between film and television adaptation
• Colonialism/postcolonialism/postnationalism
• Vampires and money/business
• Vampires and class relations
• Vampires, authors and fans

Please send abstracts, or not more than 200 words, to

Dr. Deborah Mutch
Department of English
Clephan Building
De Montfort University
Leicester
LE1 9BH

Email: Deborah Mutch

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For more information, click here.

Conference fee: £30/£15 postgraduate/unwaged, including lunch and refreshments.

Deadline for abstracts: 8th September 2010.