Table of Contents

Acknowledgments vii
Introduction / Elana Levine and Lisa Parks 1
1. The Changing Face of Teen Television, or Why We All Love Buffy / Mary Celeste Kearney 17
2. I Know What You Did Last Summer: Sarah Michelle Gellar and Crossover Teen Stardom / Susan Murray 43
3. Vampire Hunters: The Scheduling and Reception of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel in the United Kingdom / Annette Hill and Ian Calcutt 56
4. The Epistemological Stakes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Television Criticism and Marketing Demands / Amelie Hastie 74
5. “Did Anyone Ever Explain to You What ‘Secret Identity’ Means?” Race and Displacement in Buffy and Dark Angel / Cynthia Fuchs 96
6. At Stake: Angel’s Body, Fantasy Masculinity, and Queer Desire in Teen Television / Allison McCracken 116
7. Buffy as Femme Fatale: The Cult Heroine and the Male Spectator / Jason Middleton 145
8. Buffy and the “New Girl Order”: Defining Feminism and Femininity / Elana Levine 168
Bibliography 191
Contributors 197
Index 199

Promotional Information

Critical studies of the popular television show, Buffy the Vampire Slayer

About the Author

Elana Levine is Assistant Professor of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. She is the author of Wallowing in Sex: The New Sexual Culture of 1970s American Television, also published by Duke University Press.

Lisa Parks is Associate Professor of Film and Media Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She is the author of Cultures in Orbit: Satellites and the Televisual, also published by Duke University Press.

Reviews

"Keenly attentive to gender, age, race, and institutional politics, the essays in this collection reverberate with the clarity, cogency, and force of high-quality television studies scholarship. Undead TV is indispensable reading not only for those interested in one of the most important American television series but also for anyone who wants to be informed about the current practices, investments, and prospects of television and other associated media."--Diane Negra, coeditor of Interrogating Postfeminism: Gender and the Politics of Popular Culture "Aiming its Mr. Pointy at preconceived ideas about the show, this collection tackles Buffy from cultural, economic, and aesthetic angles. Cancellation has clearly done nothing to blunt the show's cutting edge. Read it along with Joss Whedon's new eighth-season comic book and you'll agree: Buffy is dead--long live Buffy!"--Heather Hendershot, author of Saturday Morning Censors: Television Regulation before the V-Chip "This is a useful ... addition to the body of work on Buffy and other shows."--Times Literary Supplement, 21 September 2007