Blood Read: The Vampire as Metaphor in Contemporary Culture

The vampire is one of the nineteenth century's most powerful surviving archetypes, owing largely to Bela Lugosi's portrayal of Dracula, the Bram Stoker creation. Yet the figure of the vampire has undergone many transformations in recent years, thanks to Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles and other works, and many young people now identify with vampires in complex ways.

Blood Read explores these transformations and shows how they reflect and illuminate ongoing changes in postmodern culture. It fo...