AustLit

'Despite being imaged all around us in writing, popular culture and the media, death and dying are, it often seems, the last taboo subjects in modern society. This special issue of TEXT brings together a series of articles on the topic of ‘Writing death and the Gothic’, many of which have been developed from papers presented at the inaugural Australasian Death Studies Network conference, which was held in Noosa, Queensland, in October 2015. This one-day multi-disciplinary conference brought together discussion and investigation from a range of cultural, humanities and social areas that consider death and dying, including creative arts, popular culture, health and community planning. One of the editors of this special issue, Lorna Piatti-Farnell, opened the conference with a keynote speech entitled ‘The Politics of Undying: Vampire Genetics and the Cultural Politics of Immortality’. Through an analysis of health and disease, life and death, mortality and immortality, Piatti-Farnell’s presentation enquired into the representation of the vampire in contemporary fiction, showing how, in an era dominated by scientific experimentation and technological advances, the undying nature of the vampiric body unveils underlying concerns about the current state of humanity − in physical, conceptual, and political terms. This keynote speech set the tone for the conference, and prompted many points of reference and engaged discussion.' (Introduction)