Co-hosted by Yale Club of Beijing and Yale Center Beijing. This talk is part of the 'For Humanity' Lecture Series.

Event Time

Beijing Time

Tuesday, May 6, 2025, 8:00 pm - 9:00 pm

Eastern Standard Time

Tuesday, May 6, 2025, 8:00 am - 9:00 am

Participation Format

Registration is required to receive the ZOOM access link, which will be sent shortly to your registered email or phone number. Please enter the Zoom room 15 minutes before the starting time. Once the Zoom room reaches full capacity, latecomers will not be able to join the event.  

Registration and Fees

Registration
Please click “HERE” further below to register.

Please send an email to yalecenterbeijing@yale.edu if there are any problems. 

Ticket: Free.

Additionally, this event will feature an online film screening of Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person (Vampire humaniste cherche suicidaire consentant, 2024), which will take place on May 5 from 8:00 pm to 9:30 pm (Beijing Time), the evening before the event. The Zoom meeting room for the screening will be the same as the one used for the event.

The language of the event will be English.

The Event

In the long history of vampire stories in English, a major shift occurred in the late 1990s with the groundbreaking TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which recast vampires from inscrutable, violent-tempered Others like Count Dracula or Count Orlok into characters embodied by North American teenagers.

On May 6, Heather Klemann PhD ’13, Senior Lecturer in the Department of English at Yale University, will explore how the teen-vampire genre navigates the quest for authenticity amid its own clichés and contrivances. Focusing on Ariane Louis-Seize's recent original film Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person (Vampire humaniste cherche suicidaire consentant, 2024), the talk will examine how Gen-Z teens, in particular, are reshaping the genre's boundaries.

The Speaker

Heather Klemann PhD '13
Senior Lecturer in English, Yale University

Heather Klemann is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of English at Yale University, and the Course Director for English 1014 Expository Writing Seminars. She received her PhD from Yale University’s Department of Comparative Literature in 2013 and has taught vampire literature and film for nearly a decade. In 2022, she received the Fred Strebeigh and Linda Peterson Prize for Excellence in Teaching. Her research has appeared in Studies in Romanticism, Eighteenth-Century Studies, and The Lion and the Unicorn. She is currently working on manuscripts on new directions in vampire fiction and film since the 2010s, as well as on writing pedagogy.