‘Some Assembly Required’:
Building a Course with Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Chair:
Lynne Edwards, Ursinus College, Collegeville, PA, USA
Participants:
Performing the Imaginative Variation: Using Buffy to Teach Sartre
Vivien Burr, University of Huddersfield, Queensgate, Huddersfield,
HD1 3DH, UK
Buffy’s Contribution to Anti-Oppressive Practice
Christine Jarvis, University of Huddersfield, Queensgate, Huddersfield,
HD8 8AS, UK
‘Here Endeth the Lesson’: Teaching Buffy in a Liberal Arts Institution
Lynne Edwards, Ursinus College, Collegeville, PA, USA
Panel Abstract
In Sunnydale, high school is hell, your loving boyfriend doesn’t call you back after the first (and only) sexual encounter, and loved ones do die. Just like in real life. For seven seasons, Joss Whedon and the Mutant Enemy team taught us that our monsters are real and so is our power to defeat them --- if we are brave enough and if we are smart enough to learn how.
Sartre and sex. Freire and fear. Reflections and reality. Buffy’s greatest strength lies the multiple layers of the text, rich in language and meaning; ripe for interpretation, illustration, and illumination in classrooms around the world. Four panel members share their experiences using Buffy the Vampire Slayer to illustrate methods of critical analysis, complex psychological theories, sensitive topics like AIDS for at-risk youth, and our reality as the supernatural in Sunnydale.
Here, fortunately, the lesson does not endeth…
Performing the Imaginative Variation: Using Buffy to teach Sartre
Teaching psychology often involves explaining complex theories. These can sometimes appear abstract and to have little relevance to people’s lives. Illustrating them with real-life examples is a common way of getting over this, but in areas that are sensitive this can be a problem. One such area is sexuality, a topic of considerable relevance to psychologists. A few years ago I introduced a session on Sartre’s analysis of sexuality to an undergraduate psychology module we call ‘The Body’ (no reference to the episode intended!). The challenge was not only to make Sartre’s ideas comprehensible to the students but to show how these ideas apply to real life, to lives like theirs. As a show aimed primarily at a youthful audience, Buffy addresses issues that most students can identify with, making it a useful vehicle for exploring these. But Buffy provides an additional possibility, and one that gives it a curiously reflexive turn in the context of using it to teach phenomenology. The central conceit of the vampire, together with its variants of ‘vampire with a soul’ and ‘vampire with a chip’, effectively constitute the phenomenological method of the ‘imaginative variation’ (Husserl). This is a kind of thought experiment, where the essence of an experience is revealed by considering how its meaning would be affected by changes in certain features of it. Buffy thus allows us to contemplate human sexuality as it is revealed through the not-quite-human figure of the vampire.
Dr. Vivien Burr, Principal Lecturer in Psychology
School of Human and Health Sciences
University of Huddersfield
Queensgate
Huddersfield
HD1 3DH
UK
Tel: (44) (0)1484 472454
Buffy’s Contribution to Anti-Oppressive Practice
I teach professionals (youth workers, teachers, community educators) working with young people who are at risk or disadvantaged in some way. BtVS does more than offer us a vehicle for discussing some common social issues affecting the young. Its rich and referential qualities enable us to get to the heart of some of the contradictions underpinning taken-for -granted beliefs and assumptions in society that actually create disadvantage and limit opportunity.
I base the use of BtVS in teaching on Freire’s concept of the ‘generative theme.’ These, he argued, are ‘the concrete representations’ of the ‘ideas, concepts, hopes, doubts, values and challenges’ which characterise a particular era in time. They are used by anti-oppressive educators to encourage people to identify dialectical oppositions which pinpoint the existence of oppressive myths and practices that constrain their lives.
The paper will give illustrations of the approach, considering, for example, how the subtle multi-layered use of the metaphors of vampire and werewolf offer insight into the contradictory nature of beliefs about youthful sexual experience; how the portrayal of teachers suggests a society that holds irreconcilably opposed views and expectations about the role of these professionals.
Christine Jarvis
Department of Community and International Education
School of Education and Professional Development
University of Huddersfield
Queensgate
Huddersfield
HD8 8AS
Tel: 01484 478215
AV requirements: OHP, video and monitor.
‘Here Endeth the Lesson’: Teaching Buffy in a Liberal Arts Institution
Slaying vampires and saving the world is nothing compared to proposing and teaching a communications course about Buffy the Vampire Slayer at a small liberal arts college! From teaching adolescent fans to become thoughtful critics to persuading skeptical colleagues, Buffy functions as text, tool, and foundation for further study in popular communication…with some bloodshed.
This paper explores the use of Buffy the Vampire Slayer as the primary text for a lower-level seminar designed to explore issues of race, gender, and class in television through viewings and discussion of scholarly Buffy research. The author also explores the use of Buffy as the primary “tool” for a media criticism course designed to introduce students to a variety of critical methods (e.g., auter, semiotics, industry studies). Finally, the author discusses the pedagogical issues surrounding the use of the program as the foundation for a new area in popular communication studies within the department and the school.
Dr. Lynne Edwards
Associate Professor, Communication Studies and Theater
Ursinus College
Collegeville, PA 19426
USA
Tel: 610-409-3000, x2567