A literary expert reveals the Christian roots of the vampire myth and helps make Christian sense of today's popular obsession with vampires.

The Twilight saga has become one of the most successful fiction series ever written, with more than one hundred million copies in print and several blockbuster films. Despite the tremendous commercial success Twilight has generated, few readers have analyzed its theological teachings or the messages Stephenie Meyer might be sending to women and teenage girls. This book offers both a feminist critique of Twilight and a theological review of the stories' ideas about salvation, heaven and hell, power, reconciliation, resurrection, and organized religion. Elaine Heath writes in an accessible voice, calling attention to both the "good news" of Twilight's theology and the "bad news" of its gender stereotypes and depictions of violence against women. The book includes questions for youth and adult groups or for classroom discussions.

This Pivot traces the rise of the so-called “vegetarian” vampire in popular culture and contemporary vampire fiction, while also exploring how the shift in the diet of (some) vampires, from human to animal or synthetic blood, responds to a growing ecological awareness that is rapidly reshaping our understanding of relations with others species. The book introduces the trope of the vegetarian vampire, as well as important critical contexts for its discussion: the Anthropocene, food studies, and the modern practice, politics and ideologies of vegetarianism. Drawing on references to recent historical contexts and developments in the genre more broadly, the book investigates the vegetarian vampire’s relationship to other more violent and monstrous forms of the vampire in popular twenty-first century horror cinema and television. Texts discussed include Interview with the Vampire, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Twilight, The Vampire Diaries and True Blood. Reading the Vegetarian Vampire examines a new aspect of contemporary interest in considering vampire fiction.

This comprehensive bibliography covers writings about vampires and related creatures from the 19th century to the present. More than 6,000 entries document the vampire's penetration of Western culture, from scholarly discourse, to popular culture, politics and cook books. Sections by topic list works covering various aspects, including general sources, folklore and history, vampires in literature, music and art, metaphorical vampires and the contemporary vampire community. Vampires from film and television--from Bela Lugosi's Dracula to Buffy the Vampire Slayer, True Blood and the Twilight Saga--are well represented.

This book provides an engaging historical survey of the vampire in American popular culture over 100 years, ranging from Bram Stoker's classic novel Dracula to HBO's television series True Blood. Vampires in the New World surveys vampire films and literature from both national and historical perspectives since the publication of Bram Stoker's Dracula, providing an overview of the changing figure of the vampire in America. It focuses on such essential popular culture topics as pulp fiction, classic horror films, film noir, science fiction, horror fiction, blaxploitation, and the recent Twilight and True Blood series in order to demonstrate how cultural, scientific, and ideological trends are reflected and refracted through the figure of the vampire. The book will fascinate anyone with an interest in vampires as they are found in literature, film, television, and popular culture, as well as readers who appreciate horror and supernatural fiction, crime fiction, science fiction, and the gothic. It will also appeal to those who are interested in the interplay between society and film, television, and popular culture, and to readers who want to understand why the figure of the vampire has remained compelling to us across different eras and generations.

Evil, death, demons, reanimation, and resurrection. While such topics are often reserved for the darker mindscapes of the vampire subgenre within popular culture, they are equally integral elements of religious history and belief. Despite the cultural shift of presenting vampires in a secular light, the traditional figure of the vampire within cinema and literature has a rich legacy of serving as a theological marker. Whether as a symbol of the allure of sin, as an apologetic for assorted religious icons, or as a gateway into a discussion of liberationist theology, the vampire has served as a spiritual touchstone from Bram Stoker's Dracula, to Stephen King's Salem's Lot, to the HBO television series True Blood. In Such a Dark Thing, Jess Peacock examines how the figure of the vampire is able to traverse and interconnect theology and academia within the larger popular culture in a compelling and engaging manner. The vampire straddles the ineffable chasm between life and death and speaks to the transcendent in all of us, tapping into our fundamental curiosity of what, if anything, exists beyond the mortal coil, giving us a glimpse into the interminable while maintaining a cultural currency that is never dead and buried.