Taught virtually via Zoom
Tuesday, June 6, 13, 27, July 11, 25, August 15, 29
6 - 8 pm ET

Tuesday, September 5 will be held in-person in the Morbid Anatomy Library, with an after-party at Barrow’s Intense Tasting Room

Full series: $95 Patreon Members / $125 General Admission
Single session: $45 Patreon Members / $55 General Admission

PLEASE NOTE: All classes will also be recorded and archived for students who cannot make that time.

This summer, Morbid Anatomy invites you to join our Summer Goth Book Club where we will read and discuss a selection of three books curated by English professor, “vampire expert,” and author of Gothic Queer Culture, Dr. Laura Westengard. Each month, book club members will read one vampire novel, attend a virtual film screening, and join a 2-hour virtual book club meeting to discuss themes and reactions to the book, with special attention to queer and Gothic elements.

Dr. Westengard will provide reflection/discussion questions to guide the conversation, host an ongoing group chat on Discord throughout the month, and share a list of resources for further reading on the topic. All book club meetings will be held over Zoom and recordings will be made available. The last session will be a meet and greet in the Morbid Anatomy Library, in Brooklyn, New York.

• Tuesday June 6: Introductory Class.

• Tuesday June 13: Secret Vampire film Screening 1

• Tuesday June 27: Carmilla, Sheridan LeFanu, 1872

• Tuesday July 11: Secret Vampire film Screening 2

• Tuesday July 25: Interview with a Vampire, Anne Rice, 1976

• Tuesday August 15: Secret Vampire film Screening 3

• Tuesday August 29: Fledgling, Octavia E. Butler, 2005

• Tuesday September 5: In-Person Meet and Greet in the Morbid Anatomy Library, Brooklyn, NY and After-Party at Barrow’s Intense Tasting Room

Laura Westengard is an Associate Professor of English at the City University of New York. Her book, Gothic Queer Culture: Marginalized Communities and the Ghosts of Insidious Trauma shows how queer culture adopts gothicism to challenge heteronormative and racialized systems and practices and to acknowledge the effects of microaggression and insidious trauma on queer communities. She is also co-editor of The 25 Sitcoms that Changed Television: Turning Points in American Culture, a collection that explores American culture after 1945 through the analysis of television sitcoms and their cultural resonances. 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-known 19th and early 20th-century medical devices that have shaped contemporary understandings of gender and sexuality.

Images, in order: ;Vampyr II, Edvard Munch, 1895; La Femme Chauve-Souris, Albert Joseph Pénot, 1890; Carmilla, D.H. Friston, 1872; Interview with a Vampire, Neil Jordan, 1994