Buffy the Vampire Slayer is perhaps the most written-about television show in the history of academia. Only seven seasons in length, the series has generated three published and two forthcoming anthologies as well as countless articles in journals from scholars in communication, women studies, sociology, English, religion and other fields. The polysemic richness of the text has also generated a scholarly web site,www.slayage.tv, with its own on-line journal and conferences.

Consequently, Buffy the Vampire Slayer has found its way into the curricula of universities.  The series provides a lens by which a variety of critical perspectives of interest to professors can be taught. Representational issues of gender, violence, sexuality, race, class, and ethnicity can be endlessly explored within production and reception contexts that include stardom, fandom, marketing, screenwriting, authorship, genre, censorship, and advertising.

This session features presentations by the next wave of Buffy the Vampire Slayer scholars, currently all of who are undergraduates in Dr. Kevin Sandler's Buffy the Vampire Slayer class at the University of Arizona in Fall 2003 (see attached syllabus). Selected out of a pool of thirty students, these three students will have written and/or designed the best work in the class, demonstrating a strong familiarization of the scholarly literature on Buffy the Vampire Slayer in their Extra Evidence Project (see attached syllabus). Kevin Sandler will first share his experience teaching an entire class on the second and third seasons of series, discussing its strengths (a valuable introduction to understandings of feminism, genre, authorship, gaming, and scriptwriting) and weaknesses (fan appreciations vs. critical readings of the series, inescapable spoilers in articles, different degrees of knowledge of the series among the students). The three students will follow my presentation. Their names and topics will not be decided until mid-to-late November, the time when their projects will be due.