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. Building on a foundation in British Romanticism, she has published on topics from eighteenth-century Afrodiasporic literature to contemporary genre television. Her work is organized around how systems of power and visions of liberation persist and transform across time and culture.

In her current research, she engages vampires as figures that reveal how the past lingers 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 writing, Deanna is a founding member of the Bigger 6 Collective and occasionally pops into the Dear Vampire Diaries podcast. She serves as Associate Editor for Reviews at The Journal of American Culture and coordinates Spelman’s partnership with the Georgia Film Academy.