1. Introduction – Sam George and Bill Hughes2. The deformed transformed; or, from bloodsucker to Byronic hero: Polidori and the literary vampire – Conrad Aquilina, 3. Sheridan Le Fanu’s vampires and Ireland’s invited invasion – Julieann Ulin4. ‘He make in the mirror no reflect’: Undead aesthetics and mechanical reproduction – Dorian Gray, Dracula, and David Reed’s ‘vampiric painting’ – Sam George5. The vampire as dark and glorious necessity in George Sylvester Viereck’s House of the Vampire and Hanns Heinz Ewers’ Vampir – Lisa Lampert-Weissig6. The Undead in the kingdom of shadows: the rise of the cinematic vampire – Stacey Abbott7. Crossing oceans of time: Stoker, Coppola and the ‘new vampire’ film – Lindsey Scott8. ‘I feel strong. I feel different’: transformations, vampires and language in Buffy the Vampire Slayer – Malgorzata Drewniok9. ‘Gothic Charm School; or, how vampires learned to sparkle’ – Catherine Spooner10. A vampire heaven: the economics of salvation in Dracula and Twilight – Jennifer H. Williams11. The Twilight Saga and the pleasures of spectatorship: the broken body and the shining body – Sara Wasson and Sarah Artt12. The postmodern vampire in ‘post-race’ America: HBO’s True Blood – Michelle Smith13. ‘Myriad mirrors: doppelgängers and doubling in The Vampire Diaries’ – Kimberley McMahon-Coleman14. The vampire in the machine: exploring the undead interface – Ivan Phillips15. ‘Legally recognised undead’: essence, difference, and assimilation in Daniel Waters’s Generation Dead – Bill Hughes16. The elusive vampire: folklore and fiction – writing My Swordhand is Singing – Marcus SedgwickBibliographyIndex

Open graves, open minds relates the Undead in literature and other media to questions concerning genre, technology, consumption and social change. It features original research by leading scholars (Dr Sam George is a frequent commentator on the contemporary vampire; Dr Catherine Spooner, a pioneer of the study of Contemporary Gothic; and Dr Stacey Abbott is the author of the seminal work on the vampire in film and TV). The essays cover texts both familiar and unexpected, bringing debates around fictional vampires into the twenty-first century where they are currently enjoying a vogue. This wide-ranging collection forms a coherent narrative which follows Enlightenment studies of the vampire’s origins in folklore and folk panics, tracing sources of vampire fiction, through Romantic incarnations in Byron and Polidori to Le Fanu’s Carmilla. Further essays discuss the undead in the context of Dracula, fin-de-siècle decadence and Nazi Germany together with early cinematic treatments. The rise of the sympathetic vampire is charted from Coppola’s Dracula, to Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Twilight. More recent manifestations in novels, TV, Goth subculture, young adult fiction and cinema are dealt with in discussions of True Blood, The Vampire Diaries and much more. The book is essential reading for those who wish to explore open graves with an open mind: scholars of literature and film, enthusiasts of all things vampiric and writers of Undead fiction. The Transylvanian notebooks of the award-winning novelist Marcus Sedgwick conclude the study, shedding light on recent trends in young adult fiction. Sedgwick lays bare the writing process for budding novelists and creative writers in the genre.