Date of Award
Spring 5-19-2023
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Bachelor of Arts (BA)
Department
--Please Select Department--
First Advisor
Beck Krefting
Second Advisor
Aaron Pedinotti
Abstract
Beginning from their establishment in Gothic literature, vampires have always represented the Other: people of color, Jews, sex workers, and queers have always inhabited the illegibility of the vampire. By taking on this label through identifying with representations of the vampire in film, there’s a potential for the transformation of a subject that allows for retooling kinship, embracing non-normative forms of being, and existing beyond thresholds of static identity. Employing the philosophy of becoming posited by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, I argue that analyzing the figure of the queer vampire through its transformative, ‘becoming’ potential both problematizes and reinforces its function as a discursive figure in media. This reading of queer vampire media (particularly lesbian vampire exploitation films and their antecedents) reveal the political potential for identity and community formation of becoming-vampire in a posthuman framework, and allows for the phenomenon of Real Vampires that emerges from Goth subcultures and the advent of queer/vampire/Goth subjectivities.
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Recommended Citation
Thayer, Maelcom, "Camp is Undead(?): Queer Vampire Becoming in the Age of Nonconformity" (2023). Periclean Honors Forum Scholar Award Winners. 8.
https://creativematter.skidmore.edu/peri_stu_scholar/8