Buffy the Vampire Slayer transcended its cult-comic roots to achieve television success, spawning the spinoff series Angel and an academic movement along the way. This scholarly treatment takes a multidisciplinary approach to Buffy’s fandom, which has expressed itself through fiction, videos, music, art, and other media. Ten essays analyze the sociology and anthropology of the fan community and how it uses the Internet to share its passion.

Mary Kirby-Diaz is a professor of sociology at Farmingdale State College in New York, with a study specialty in family, pedagogy and community mediation. A Buffy fan, she began researching the show’s popular culture in 2003.

Edited by Mary Kirby-Diaz

Format: softcover (6 x 9)
Pages: 219
Bibliographic Info: glossary, bibliography, index
Copyright Date: 2009
pISBN: 978-0-7864-4205-8
eISBN: 978-0-7864-5320-7
Imprint: McFarland

Acknowledgments      v
Introduction      1

PART 1—FANDOMS AS COMMUNITIES
I’ve Got a Little List, or, “You Guys Wanna Team Up and Take Over SunnydaleU?”
ELIZABETH L. RAMBO      7
Buffy, Angel, and the Creation of Virtual Communities
MARY KIRBY-DIAZ      18

PART 2—SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES ON FANDOMS
RL on LJ: Fandom and the Presentation of Self in Online Life
REBECCA BLEY      43
So, What’s the Story? Story-Oriented and Series-Oriented Fans: A Complex of Behaviors
MARY KIRBY-DIAZ      62

PART 3—THE BRONZE AGE: 1997–2001
“In the World, But Not of It”: An Ethnographic Analysis of an Online Buffy the Vampire Slayer Fan Community
ASIM ALI      87
Community, Language, and Postmodernism at the Mouth of Hell
ASIM ALI      107

PART 4—PARTICIPATORY COMMUNITIES AND THE PRODUCTION OF CULTURE
“Fake It Till You Make It”: Understanding Media Addiction and Buffy the Vampire Slayer
DAVID KOCIEMBA      127
The Problematic Definition of “Fan”: A Survey of Fannish Involvement in the Buffyverse
CLAUDIA REBAZA      147
“Easy to Associate Angsty Lyrics with Buffy”: An Introduction to a Participatory Fan Culture: Buffy the Vampire Slayer Vidders, Popular Music and the Internet
KATHRYN HILL      172

Glossary      197
Selected Bibliography      199
About the Contributors      205
Index      207

“useful”—Media International Australia.