Vampires and the Making of the United States in the Twenty-First Century

Simon Bacon is a writer and independent scholar based in Poznań, Poland. He has written and edited over thirty books on various subjects including Gothic: A Reader (2018), Horror: A Companion (2019), Eco-Vampires (2020), Nosferatu in the 21st Century (2023), The Evolution of Horror in the 21st Century (2023) and Future Folk Horror (2023).

• IntroductionPart I: Towns and Cities1. Forks: Exploited Reservations, Ongoing Subjugation and Indigenous Historicisation—The Whitewashing of Washington State in the Twilight Novels2. Chicago: Some Girls White—Taking the “Urban” Out of Urban Fantasy in the Chicagoland Vampires Series3. New York City: Bloodlines and Skylines—Vampires, Colonisation, and Gentrification in New York City4. Hollywood: Vampires in Hollywood5. Louisiana: Vampires of the American South—Exploring Undead Louisiana in True Blood and The OriginalsPart II: Environments6. Carnival—Vampire Vagabonds: Revealing Regional Haunts in American Vampire Lore7. Suburbia: Blood in da ‘Burbs’8. Urban Decay: “He Could be the Boy Next Door…”—Urban Decay and Race in Martin9. Drifters: Vagrant Vampires—Bloodsuckers in America’s Arteries10. Borderlands: “From Here to Modernity”—The Heterotopic Meaning of the Vampires in Dusk till Dawn (Series 3)11. Winterlands: Hideous Winter—Vampires, Violence and Snow in American Screen HorrorPart III: Ideologies12. The Margins: Boardwalk Vampire—Staking a Claim to the Edges of the American Nightmare13. The Folk—A Psychogeography of the Dead: American Folk Horror Cinema and New England as a (Bad) State of Mind14. The Old South: “No One Likes to Reminisce About the Old Slave Days”: Romanticizing the Old South, Confederate Vampires, and Transatlantic Slavery in Twenty-First Century Vampire Media15. Capitalism: Vampire Capitalism—Daybreakers and American Bloodsuckers16. The Future?: A Future America—Possible Topographies of a Future Vampiric America in Stake Land (2010) and Crimson Winter (2013) Index