Buffy Scholar/Critic

Alanna Kathleen Brown, Professor of English, started her professional career in 1973 at Montana State University, after receiving her Ph.D. from the University of California, Santa Barbara.  She is the recipient of numerous awards including the Burlington Northern Teaching Award for Excellence (1989), Outstanding Teacher, College of Letters and Science (1996), Western Region Distinguished Scholar, Phi Kappa Phi, National Honor Society (1998-2001), and is currently an NEH Research Fellow (2004).  While her doctoral areas were in Shakespeare and Victorian Studies, her primary publication interest has been to explore assimilation pressures on Northwest Indian peoples through writers such as Mourning Dove and D’Arcy McNickle, although she also publishes on contemporary Native American writers like Leslie Marmon Silko and Louise Erdrich.  Her work is included in nationally recognized journals and essay collections in both Canada and the United States.  Dr. Brown has also served on the Executive Council of the Western Literature Association (1996-1998), the Executive Committee of the Division on American Indian Literatures of the Modern Language Association (1996-2000), and is currently an Ethnic Studies Delegate for the Modern Languages Association (2003-2005).  She comes to Buffy, the Vampire Slayer via an initial fascination with Xena, the Warrior Princess, and the extraordinary models of strength, agility, ingenuity, intelligence, courage, comraderie, character insight, and political savvy, the female characters provide their viewers, both male and female.  These heroines are secure in their feminism and their male compatriots are profoundly humane.  Nancy Drew Mystery Stories were as close as her generation got to such characters, and that was not close at all.  What a wonderful brave new world.

Brown, Alanna. "Buffy the Vampire Slayer and the Monstrous Within and Without" (paper presented at the Slayage Conference on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Nashville, TN, May 2004).