Call for Chapters: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on the Legacy of Buffy the Vampire Slayer
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Call for Chapters: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on the Legacy of Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Proposed editor: Natalie Le Clue
Into every generation a slayer is born. Thirty years ago, these words introduced Buffy Summers to the world and carried her into a cult-like status that endures to this day.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer, first launched in 1997, is unquestionably one of the most well-analysed and researched texts. It has been venerated, celebrated, and is revered for its storytelling, hybrid genre, and dynamic engagement with power, identity, and emotion. However, despite the vast richness of research and scholarship, the series and interpretations thereof continue to generate novel perspectives as the media landscape, audiences, and theoretical approaches evolve.
This collection, Interdisciplinary Perspectives on the Legacy of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, therefore, seeks to offer a platform for scholars from diverse disciplines to explore, unpack, and interrogate the enduring impact, narrative complexity, and contemporary relevance of the series. As such, the collection invites contributions from media studies, television studies, cultural studies, gender studies, sociology, literature, and all related fields. Chapters may address the narrative strategies of the series, character evolution, thematic concerns, audience engagement, historical context, and ongoing influence within contemporary media culture. Both theoretical and empirical approaches are welcome and encouraged.
Topics may include, but are not limited to:
- Narrative innovation
- Serial storytelling
- Genre hybridity
- Gender, identity, and representation
- Emotional and moral complexity
- Trauma, grief, and resilience
- Character development and transformation
- Memory, nostalgia, and afterlives of the series
- Related fanfiction, creative authorship, and collaborative storytelling
- Audience interpretation and meaning making
- Cult television
- Generational readings
- Shifting interpretations over time
- Relevance to contemporary anxieties
- Buffy and philosophy
- Buffy and mythology and folklore
Submission Details
You are invited to submit an abstract of 250 – 300 words, along with a short bio, by 30 April 2026.
Abstracts should outline the chapter’s focus, theoretical framework, and contribution to existing scholarship. Full chapters are expected to be 6000 – 8000 words.
Please send abstract submissions and enquiries to: buffybook1@gmail.com
Abstract deadline: 30 April 2026
Notification of acceptance: 31 May 2026
Full chapter deadline: 31 October 2026
Natalie Le Clue