Postfeminism and Contemporary Vampire Romance

In this book Lea Gerhards traces connections between three recent vampire romance series; the <i>Twilight</i>film series (2008-2012) <i>The Vampire Diaries</i> (2009-2017) and <i>True Blood</i> (2008-2014) exploring their tremendous discursive and ideological power in order to understand the cultural politics of these extremely popular texts. <br/><br/>She uses contemporary vampire romance to examine postfeminist ideologies and discuss gender sexuality subjectivity agency and the body. Discussing a range of conflicting meanings contained in the narratives Gerhards critically looks genre's engagement with everyday sexism and violence against women power relations in heterosexual relationships sexual autonomy and pleasure (self-) empowerment and (self-) surveillance. She asks: Why are these genre texts so popular right now what specific desires issues and fears are addressed and negotiated by them and what kinds of pleasures do they offer?