Popular Culture in Critical Perspective: Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Buffy the Vampire Slayer provided one of the critical moments in the evolution of television: spectacularly inventive, brilliantly written, complexly plotted, exquisitely filled with metaphor and meaning. It is a show whose many subtexts—feminism and gender roles; issues of morality, faith and belief; the ethics of violence; the nature of society and the family—made it one of the richest social narratives ever to appear on-screen. We’ll explore those subtexts, looking at the way in which so seemingly innocuous a genre as vampire fiction can be refashioned to make it a cogent and powerful discourse on modern society and its essential dilemmas.

Note: familiarity with the show before class is helpful but not necessary.

Course Number: GINT-81291   Credit: 0 units

There are no sections of this course planned for the current quarter. Please contact the Arts, Humanities & Languages department at (858) 964-1051 or ahl@ucsd.edu for information about when this course will be offered again.