About the Editors

U. MELISSA ANYIWO is an Associate Professor of History and Director of Black Studies at the University of Scranton, PA, and Co-Chair of the Vampire Studies Area of the National Popular Culture Association (PCA). In addition, she serves on the Boards of the PCA, the Popular Culture Association / American Culture Association and American Cultures of the South (PCAS), and the Peter Lang Series Vampire Studies: New Perspectives on the Undead.

A transplanted Nigerian-British American citizen with a background in race, gender, diversity, and visual archetypes, she has over twenty years of experience writing and presenting on racial and gendered stereotypes, especially the vampire. Through the creation of Black Studies programs at three universities, Anyiwo has taught multiple courses focused on unpacking monstrosities such as the Black Superhero, Black Success on Film, and Race in America. In addition, she has taught in both First Year Studies and the Junior Capstone programs, teaching multiple levels of students.

She has published a number of book chapters on teaching diversity in the classroom including “Using Vampires to Explore Diversity and Alienation in a College Classroom” in The Vampire Goes to College: Essays on Teaching with the Undead (McFarland and Company Inc. 2013).

But her main published work has focused on unpacking black female stereotypes on screen, especially in vampire media. This includes the edited collections Race in the Vampire Narrative (Sense, 2015), Gender in the Vampire Narrative (Sense, 2016), Gender Warriors: Reading Contemporary Urban Fantasy (Brill, 2018) Queering the Vampire Narrative (Brill, 2022) and Teaching with Vampires (Palgrave, 2025).

Finally, she starred in the documentaries “Lestat, Louis, and the Vampire Phenomenon” for the Interview with the Vampire 20th Anniversary Edition DVD (Warner Brothers, 2014,) and It’s More Than Hair (2022).

AMANDA JO HOBSON is a popular culture scholar, educator, and student affairs and belonging practitioner, who currently serves as the Associate Director of Community and Belonging at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology.

As an administrator, her work focuses on issues of justice and equity in higher education, and she regularly presents about a wide-range of belongingness issues, including gender justice, sexuality education, bystander intervention, and sexual violence. Hobson’s doctoral work at Ohio University’s School of Interdisciplinary Arts centered on sexuality and the erotic within feminist horror films and pornography. She has been invited to deliver lectures on the topic of vampires in popular culture, including one for the BalletMet of Columbus, Ohio, for their production of Dracula. She is the co-editor with U. Melissa Anyiwo of Gender in the Vampire Narrative (Sense Publishers, 2016), Gender Warriors: Reading Contemporary Urban Fantasy (Brill | Sense Publishers, 2018), Queering the Vampire Narrative (Brill | Sense Publishers, 2024). She serves as the Vice President for Belonging, Outreach, and Membership for the Popular Culture Association.