Deanna P. Koretsky

About

Deanna P. Koretsky is a literary and cultural critic, Associate Professor in the Department of Literature, Media, and Writing at Spelman College, and a 2026-27 fellow in residence at the James Weldon Johnson Institute for the Study of Race and Difference at Emory University. She has published on topics from British Romanticism and early Afrodiasporic literature to contemporary television and film, all organized around a central interest in how systems of power and visions of liberation persist and transform across time and culture.

In her current work, she engages vampires as figures that reveal how the past recurs in the present, using this framework to examine how inherited concepts of race, neurodivergence, gender, and sexuality continue to shape culture and politics. This approach informs her second monograph, tentatively entitled Bad Blood and Monstrous Minds: The Racial Logics of the War on Autism, and an edited volume on AMC’s Interview with the Vampire / The Vampire Lestat.

Earlier publications include Death Rights: Romantic Suicide, Race, and the Bounds of Liberalism (2021), Mary Shelley’s Mathilda (2025), Demystifying Mystic Falls: Essays on Race in the Vampire Diaries Universe (2027), and over a dozen scholarly essays and book chapters. Beyond her solo work, Deanna serves as Associate Editor for Reviews at The Journal of American Culture and coordinates Spelman’s partnership with the Georgia Film Academy. She is a founding member of the Bigger 6 Collective and occasionally pops into the Dear Vampire Diaries podcast.