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 known 19th and early 20th century medical devices that have shaped contemporary understandings of gender and sexuality. For information regarding your data privacy, visit acast.com/privacy