Critically Reading the Vampire Diaries

H-Announce Updated CFP: Critically Reading The Vampire Diaries

Announcement published by Kimberley McMahon-Coleman on Thursday, July 16, 2020 Type: Call for Papers Date: July 15, 2020 to August 14, 2020 Subject Fields: Literature, Popular Culture Studies Vampires are a phenomenon that have captivated humans since ancient times, and continue to globally fascinate different target audiences. From vampires in early Chinese traditions to their depiction in early poems such as “The Vampire” by Heinrich August Ossenfelder, to Lord Byron’s “The Vampyre”, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, to vampires in more recent TV series and movies, this creature has not only evoked fear and horror but has also embodied both anxieties as well as desires of the culture and time in which it was created. Consequently, as vampire narratives today have started to go beyond the realms of horror, sometimes even turning the vampire into romantic heroes, they bring new insights to current issues across various fields.

This call for papers reaches out to scholars interested in working on interpretations of the CBS series The Vampire Diaries. This American supernatural teen drama features a diverse set of characters, both dead and undead, while touching on topics such as friendship, romance, adulthood, as well as depression, and aging. So far, no book length work has dealt with this complex series, and it is our aim to publish an in-depth analysis consisting of 10-11 chapters that offer critical and creative readings of this series.

We welcome contributions that investigate but are by no means limited to the following topics as they relate to The Vampire Diaries:

Television studies Intertextuality/intermediality Importance of Social Media Gothic Gender Adolescence Aging Postmodern Approaches Anxieties/fears and desires

Citation: Kimberley McMahon-Coleman. Updated CFP: Critically Reading The Vampire Diaries. H-Announce. 07-16-2020. https://networks.h-net.org/node/73374/announcements/6255779/updated-cfp-critically-reading-vampire-diaries Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. 1 H-Announce

Humor Transgression Mind Control History Fandom Canon—the relationships between the TV series, novels, and spinoffs (The Originals, Legacies, and Stefan’s Diaries novels).

Submissions already accepted for this volume have largely focused on gender and genre, so we would welcome submissions that broaden the focus of the collection. We are identifying the series, its antecedents and its spin-offs as examples of postmodernist storytelling, so this should be acknowledged in submissions.

What to send: 400-500 words abstracts (or complete papers, if available) and a brief author bio of 150 words should be submitted by August 14, 2020. If an abstract is accepted for the book, a full draft of the paper (6000-8000 words) will be required by October 31, 2020.

Proposed writing and publication schedule: Writing schedule – Draft completed October 31, 2020 Revisions, editing – Completed November/December, 2020 Submission to McFarland –January, 2021 Contact Info: Kimberley McMahon-Coleman, Nina Vanessa Weber & Iris-Aya Laemmerhirt Contact Email: [email protected]