Why Are People Into That?!

Just in time for the nights to get longer, CUNY professor and author of the new book Gothic Queer Culture Laura Westengard discusses insidious trauma: from Castle of Otranto to True Blood, how vampires create their own erotic holes, and why monster desire is always queer desire. // Laura Westengard (she/her/hers) is an Associate Professor of English at the City University of New York where she serves as point person of the Gender & Sexuality Studies concentration and as a board member for CLAGS: The Center for LGBTQ Studies. She is the author of Gothic Queer Culture: Marginalized Communities and the Ghosts of Insidious Trauma and co-editor of The 25 Sitcoms that Changed Television: Turning Points in American Culture. She writes about popular culture, performance art, and contemporary U.S. literature and recently published an illustrated essay on Cold War-era lesbian pulp fiction for Morbid Anatomy. She is currently researching medical archives for an upcoming book on lesser k