Natalie Wilson

This book explores three monstrous figures prominent in contemporary popular culture—zombies, vampires, and witches—from a feminist perspective, visiting a range of novels, television series, and films from the 1990s-2010s. Though some popular mainstream texts (from Harry Potter to Twilight) still participate in historically inherited conventions, feminist analysis reveals that many millennial texts utilize monster-figures to critique regressive patriarchal ideologies and/or champion female monstrosity and (human) female agency. Rather than using zombies, vampires, and witches to conserve the status quo, millennial monsters and human heroes, especially female ones, are often deployed to envision a more feminist, egalitarian future with less violence and more social justice. In a culture in which post-feminist voices contend that feminists have achieved their aims and are thus no longer needed, this book argues instead that there still is a dire need for critical, active feminism. Monsters, creatures both incredibly potent and popular, can serve as conduits through which to lay bare existing problems and reveal possible ways forward. Popular texts like True Blood, Frozen, Maleficent, World War Z, and The Walking Dead use powerful female monsters and heroes not only to resist those forces that wish to maintain the status quo, but also to envision alternative socio-cultural formations. This book will contribute to essential discussions in feminism, popular culture, gender and sexuality studies, cultural studies, film studies, and contemporary literature.

Taking in a wide range of film, television, and literature, this volume explores 21st century horror and its monsters from an intersectional perspective with a marked emphasis on gender and race. The analysis, which covers over 70 narratives, is organized around four primary monstrous figures--zombies, vampires, witches and monstrous women. Arguing that the current horror renaissance is populated with willful monsters that subvert prevailing cultural norms and systems of power, the discussion reads horror in relation to topics of particular import in the contemporary moment--rampant sexual violence, unbridled capitalist greed, brutality against people of color, militarism, and the patriarchy's refusal to die. Examining ground-breaking films and television shows such as Get Out, Us, The Babadook, A Quiet Place, Stranger Things, Penny Dreadful, and The Passage, as well as works by key authors like Justin Cronin, Carmen Maria Machado, Helen Oyeyemi, Margo Lanagan, and Jeanette Winterson, this monograph offers a thorough account of the horror landscape and what it says about the 21st century world.

Stephenie Meyer's Twilight saga has maintained a tight grip on the contemporary cultural imagination. This timely and critical work examines how the Twilight series offers addictively appealing messages about love, romance, sex, beauty and body image, and how these charged themes interact with cultural issues regarding race, class, gender and sexuality. Through a careful analysis of the texts, the fandom and the current socio-historical climate, this work argues that the success of the Twilight series stems chiefly from Meyer's negotiation of cultural mores.