Race in the Vampire Narrative

Book excerpt: 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. Vampires began as terrors, nightmares, the most horrifying of creatures; now they are sparkly antiheroes more likely to kill your dog than drink you to death; commodified, absorbed, and defanged. Race in the Vampire Narrative demonstrates that the vampire serves as a core metaphor for the constructions of race, and the ways in which we identify, manufacture, and commodify marginalized groups. By drawing together disparate discussions of non-white vampires in popular culture, the collection illustrates the ways in which vampires can be used to explicitly help students understand ethnicity in the modern world making this the perfect companion text to any course from First Year Studies, Sociology, History, Cultural Studies, Women’s Studies, Criminal Justice, and so much more.