Brought to you by the UCSC Prof and a Pint Lecture Series 

Oh yeah, there will be a costume contest! And there will be prizes! If you want to compete please gather on the stage at 6:15pm. The lecture will start at 6:30pm as usual.

From the beginning of the earliest English-language vampire narrative in the early nineteenth century, the vampire has been a figure of both fear and desire, often represented through the vampire’s longings and the range of social responses they inspire. This talk considers several different examples of “the vampire in love” in order to explore what the vampire might tell us about our most pressing social, cultural, and political concerns across the twentieth and early-twenty-first centuries.

Kimberly Lau is Professor of Literature at UC Santa Cruz where she teaches courses on contemporary fiction, vampire narratives, fairy tales, and digital culture in relation to feminist and critical race theories. She has published a number of books and articles on a range of topics, including most recently “Erotic Infidelities: Love and Enchantment in Angela Carter’s The Bloody Chamber” (2015).