Welcome, children of the night, to a particularly shameless spooky special all about an eternally queer-coded fan favourite: the vampire. RJ Wade and Sarah Prescott join me to speak about bookish bloodsuckers, raunchy revenants, and sapphic succubi. The dramatic reading of a yet unperformed Carmilla play had me at the very edge of my seat and I also learned a lot about both the cultural and the literary history of vampirism.   References: Quite Shameless: Cultural Reflections on the Vampire https://library.leeds.ac.uk/events/event/1900/galleries/1085/quite-shameless-cultural-reflections-on-the-vampire  RJ Wade’s An Exhibition History of Victorian Leeds (Liverpool UP, 2023) https://www.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/doi/book/10.3828/9781802078541 University of Leeds Cultural Collections Bram Stoker’s Dracula Animated Activism: Women Empowered https://library.leeds.ac.uk/events/event/1900/galleries/844/animated-activism-women-empowered Hamilton Deane’s Dracula (1924) Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla (1872) The Dark Blue Byron Dracula Society https://www.thedraculasociety.org.uk/ Radclyffe Hall’s The Well of Loneliness (1928) Virginia Woolf’s Orlando (1928) Dora Mary Patrick Quincey Morris  Van Helsing Stage@Leeds https://stage.leeds.ac.uk/ Christopher Craft’s “‘Kiss Me with those Red Lips’: Gender and Inversion in Bram Stoker's Dracula” (1984) https://www.jstor.org/stable/2928560 Chris Latham Revenant Wharram Percy Maurice Beresford Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma Josephine Butler @lulgalleries C.E. McGill’s Our Hideous Progeny https://cemcgill.com/our-hideous-progeny/ BorrowBox Libby Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein Ally Wilkes’ All the White Spaces The Bookish Type https://thebookishtype.co.uk/ Kit Heyam https://kitheyam.com/   Questions you should be able to respond to after listening: -      What might make a vampire queer? Which literary vampires do we speak about in the episode? -      When Sarah talks about a ‘pleasing terror’, what kind of experience is described and who is this phrase borrowed from? Have you ever felt a pleasing terror? -      How is the revenant figure similar to and different from the vampire? -      What does Wade say about the relevance of the medical humanities lens? Please look up the term medical humanities if you are not familiar. -      Do you have a favourite vampire? How queer-coded are they?

From 21 July 2025Visit the Institute and explore our free exhibition of images taken by Hanns Rudolf Inhelder

From popstars to rugby players, this episode has all the Welsh queer icons you could want. Emily Garside teaches me about H from Steps, Russel T. Davies, the Ladies of Llangollen and so many other fascinating LGBTQIA+ people from Wales. We talk about whether wondering if you’re queer enough is similar to wondering if you’re Welsh enough and how the prejudice against ‘sounding gay’ relates to sounding Welsh.   Books by Emily Garside: Rainbow Wales: Queer Icons Past and Present (Calon, May 2026) Out of the Box: Queer TV through the Decades (Manchester University Press, January 2027) Gay Aliens and Queer Folks: How Russell T Davies Changed TV (Calon, 2023) Seasons of Love: Why Rent Matters (Applause) You Are My Happy Ending: Schitt’s Creek and the Legacy of Queer TV (Applause) Angels in America at the British National Theatre (McFarland) Love that Journey for me: The Queer Revolution of Schitt’s Creek (404 Ink)   Other References: Russel T Davies Ladies of Llangollen Edward II. Piers Gaveston Steps Ian ‘H’ Watkins Elliot Page Luke Evans Eisteddfod Cymru Marquess of Anglesey Viscount Tredegar Norena Shopland Jan Morris’ Conundrum Ivor Novello Colin Jackson Connie Orff Alun Saunders Natha Wyburn Queer As Folk It’s A Sin Lisa Power Section 28 @emigarside (IG) https://thenerdynotebook.substack.com/ https://emilygarside.com/ Surrey Rainbow Choir  https://www.rainbowchoir.co.uk/     Questions you should be able to respond to after listening: -      Is there such a thing as a cohesive Welsh queer identity? What are Emily’s thoughts on this and what is her approach? -      Emily speaks about parallels between attitudes towards Welsh and queer identities. Which one does she discuss? Is there a facet of your identity that feels similar yet different from your queerness? -      What is an eisteddfod? Please look it up if you’re not familiar because we forgot to explain the term in the episode. -      Have you ever askes yourself whether you are queer or trans enough? How do we speak about this question in this episode? -      Who was your favourite person to learn about in the episode?

В материале упоминается «движение ЛГБТ», деятельность которого запрещена в РФ

Liebe Unterstützer*innen,wir freuen uns das neue Jahr mit weiteren Soli-Aktionen für unser Archivzentrum einläuten zu können. Die Unterstützung aus der queeren…

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