News

BENBELLA BOOKS TO PUBLISH SEVEN SEASONS OF BUFFY. Dallas publisher BenBella Books will publish in October Seven Seasons of Buffy: Science Fiction and Fantasy Authors Discuss Their Favorite Television Show. Contributors will include David Brin, Nancy Holder, Justine Larbalestier, Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, and Christie Golden.

SOUTH, WILCOX, LAVERY TO BE ON NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO. On April 25th, Rhonda Wilcox, David Lavery, James South, and Jana Riess were interviewed by National Public Radio for a story on the end of Buffy which aired on May 13th on All Things Considered. The story is archived on the NPR website and can be found and played here: http://www.npr.org/display_pages/features/feature_1262180.html

WILCOX, LAVERY, SOUTH, ZACHAREK PARTICIPATE IN POPPOLITCS BUFFY ROUNDTABLE. Rhonda Wilcox, David Lavery, James South (Professor of Philosophy at Marquette and editor of Buffy and Philosophy), and Stephanie Zacharek (critic for Salon.com) all participated in a three-part discussion of the seventh season of Buffy on PopPolitics.com. Part I | Part II | Part III.

TELEVISED MORALITY: THE CASE OF BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER. Greg Stevenson, Professor of Religion at Rochester College in Michigan, has a contract from Hamilton Books to write Televised Morality: The Case of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, an exploration of the nature of moral discourse within popular culture.

BUFFY AT SW/TEXAS PCA/ACA. At the February 2003 Conference of the SW/Texas PCA/ACA 2003 two sessions on BtVS will be held. 

SLAYER SLANG. In June 2003 Oxford University Press will publish Michael Adams's Slayer Slang: A Buffy the Vampire Slayer Lexicon. Go here to learn more about it.

STAKING A CLAIM. Following the Sonics/Synergies, Creative Cultures conference, Rhonda Wilcox and David Lavery will give talks at "Staking a Claim," a one day seminar (July 21st) on Buffy the Vampie Slayer at the University of South Australia in Adelaide. (Lavery's talk will be entitled "'Fatal Environment': Buffy the Vampire Slayer and American Culture"; Wilcox will speak on "'Show Me Your World': The Globalization of Buffy; The Buffization of the Globe.") Other participants will include Gerry Bloustien (Senior Lecturer, Program Director, Communications School of Communication, Information & New Media, University of South Australia, author of Girl-making: A Cross Cultural Ethnography of Growing Up Female [2003] and editor of Musical Visions: Music as Sound, Movement and Image [1999], Catherine Driscoll (Senior Lecturer in the Department of English at the University of Adelaide and author of Girls: Feminine Adolescence in Popular Culture and Cultural Theory and Deleuze and Feminism) and Sue Turnbull (Senior Lecturer in Media Studies at La Trobe University, co-convenor of Sisters in Crime Australia, and a widely published author on audience research, television formats and the representation of crime).

BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER AND ANGEL SYMPOSIUM. Dr Emma Hawkes has sent out a call for papers (from academic staff and postgraduate students) for an upcoming symposium on the television shows Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel to be held on Saturday 26 July 2003. The symposium is intended to offer an opportunity for academic analysis of these two television shows. In addition to reaching an academic audience, it is anticipated that the symposium may be of interest to science fiction fandom in general. The symposium is being run under the auspices of the Western Australian Science Fiction Association and will take place at the Emerald Hotel in Perth.

250 word abstracts for forty minute papers are due on 15 April 2003.

Dr Emma Hawkes

gandt@iinet.net.au

DAVID LAVERY AND RHONDA WILCOX to speak at Sonics/Synergies, Creative Cultures. The editors of Slayage will both be keynote speakers at the Sonic Synergies, Creative Cultures Conference in Australia this July. To see David's abstract go here. To see Rhonda's abstract go here.

DAVID LAVERY TO OFFER BUFFY SEMINAR AT CORNERSTONE. David Lavery will be offering a two day Buffy seminar at the 2003 Cornerstone Festival on the afternoons of July 4th and 5th. He will also be offering a seminar on Owen Barfield each morning.

RHONDA WILCOX to speak at Ursinus College. Rhonda V. Wilcox, co-editor of Fighting the Forces and of Slayage, will speak on Buffy at Ursinus College, Collegeville, PA (near Philadelphia), part of the Ursinus Arts & Lecture Program. The lecture will be in Olin Auditorium at 7:30 p.m. on February 10th.

ATHENA'S DAUGHTERS TO  BE PUBLISHED. Athena’s Daughters: Television’s New Women Warriors, edited by Slayage contributor Frances Early and Kathleen Kennedy, with a preface by Slayage co-editor Rhonda V. Wilcox, will be published this spring by Syracuse University Press. To learn more about it go here.

JANA RIESS, the Religion Book Review Editor for Publishers Weekly, has signed a contract with Jossey-Bass to write a book to be entitled What Would Buffy Do?

CALL FOR PAPERS: Sounds of the Slayer: Music and Silence in Buffy and Angel, edited by Paul Attinello and Vanessa Knights

Abstracts are invited for a new collection about sound in Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel. Contributions are sought on related topics using various disciplinary approaches, including but not limited to:

- musical performance and guest performers
- scoring and soundtrack
- narrative and characterization
- expression and symbolism
- genres and genre references
- references and intertextuality
- sociocultural resonance
- gender/race/identity associations
- sound/music/image/action analyses
- indie aesthetics
- production, marketing, and spinoffs
- audiences, reception, and fans
- erasure or unusual placement of music
- convention and innovation in different media

The editors represent the fields of musicology and cultural studies, but work from other disciplines is welcome. A broad range of approaches, including critique, analysis, hermeneutics, and industry studies (or syntheses of any of these) are encouraged, as are collaborations, especially between writers working in different fields or methods.

Potential contributors may wish to examine Janet Halfyard's analysis of gender and identity in the theme tunes of Buffy and Angel (http://slayage.tv/, issue 5, 2001), as well as S. Renee Dechert's 'My Boyfriend's in the Band!: Buffy and the Rhetoric of Music' (Wilcox & Lavery, 2002).

If you are interested in contributing, please send an abstract of 250-500 words plus a short biography (including your current status/position and a list of publications) by 31 March 2003.

Proposals should be sent both in e-mail and as attachments (Microsoft
Word or RTF), or may be sent as hard copy to:

Dr Paul Attinello
Department of Music
School of Arts and Cultures
Armstrong Building
University of Newcastle
Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 7RU
United Kingdom

E-MAIL p.g.attinello@ncl.ac.uk
Fax 44 (191) 222 5242

Applicants will be notified regarding acceptance by 1 May 2003; we expect that the deadline for completed papers will be 30 September 2003. Queries are welcome at the above e-mail or address.

Apologies for cross postings. Please pass on to interested colleagues.

Slayage was discussed in The Online Journalism Review. 

MiT3 Conference. Proposals are sought for an upcoming Media in Transition Conference at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, April 18-20, 2003. Go here to visit the conference website: http://cms.mit.edu/mit3/.

Sonic Synergies: Creative Cultures. Proposals are sought for "Sonics/Synergies, Creative Cultures," a conference to be held at the University of South Australia, July 17-20, 2003. (The conference convenor, Dr. Gerry Bloustien [gerry.bloustien@unisa.edu.au], presented a paper at the UEA Buffy conference.) The website for the conference can be found at http://www.com.unisa.edu.au/sonic. Send proposals to The Organizing Committee at sonic2003@unisa.edu.au.

Vampires Conference. Papers are invited for Vampires Conference: Myths and Metaphors of Enduring Evil, 22 to 24 May 2003, Budapest, Hungary. This inter-disciplinary and multi-disciplinary conference seeks to investigate and explore the vampire legend and its enduring influence on human culture throughout history. Perspectives are sought from those engaged in the fields of literature, media studies, cultural studies, history, anthropology, philosophy, psychology, sociology, health and theology. Ideas are welcomed from those involved in academic study, fictional explorations, and applied areas (e.g. youth work, criminology and medicine). 300 word abstracts should be submitted by Friday 10th January 2003. Deadline now extended until Friday 28th, February 2003. Full draft papers should be submitted by 15th April 2003. For further details and information please visit the conference website -  www.wickedness.net/vampires.htm

Proposals should be submitted via email to the organising committee: Peter Day - pete-day@lineone.net and Meg Barker - M.Barker@worc.ac.uk Inquiries about booking, conference accommodation, fees etc, should be directed to Rob Fisher - theodicist@wickedness.net

Deadline Dec. 31st for Center for Photography at Woodstock's (CPW) "From Puff to Buff" exhibition. Open to all artists, all media - work dealing with contemporary female icons such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The Powder Puff Girls, and Xena the Warrior Princess. For more information, contact Ariel Shanberg, CPW, 59 Tinker St. Woodstock, New York 12498; e-mail at ariel@cpw.org

Slayage is mentioned in Emily Nussbaum's essay "Must-see Metaphysics " in the The New York Times Magazine for 9-22-02. Registration is required; search for the title.

A North American Buffy conference? Planning is underway to hold a North American Buffy conference, probably in Nashville, Tennessee in May 2004. Future developments will be announced in Slayage and sent out via the Slayage mailing list. January 2003: Go here to learn more.

Science Fiction Weekly Names Slayage Its Site of the Week

Science Fiction Weekly (http://www.scifi.com/sfw/) has named Slayage its site of the week for June 17, 2002. Go here to read their assessment.

Call for Papers for a New Book on BtVS

Contributions are sought for a collection of essays titled Monsters and Metaphors: Essays on Buffy the Vampire Slayer.  Essays should focus on episodes from the first six seasons of the television series but may also incorporate the original film and episodes from Angel.  This critical anthology seeks to position the series within larger social and literary trends and traditions.  Welcome approaches include monster theory, liminality, gender studies, psychology- and sociology-oriented readings, comparative analyses, and cultural studies.  Send 2-page abstracts no later than 1 October 2002 or inquiries to Christopher Weimer, Dept. of Foreign Languages and Literatures, 309 Gundersen Bldg., Oklahoma State University, Stillwater OK 74078.  Email: CBWeimer@aol.com.

First Buffy Conference to be Held

The University of East Anglia in the UK will host the first academic conference devoted to Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Blood, Texts, and Fears: Reading Around Buffy the Vampire Slayer will be held on October 19-20, 2002. Jointly organized by Film Studies and the British Centre for Literary Translation, School of English & American Studies, and the School of Language, Linguistics & Translation Studies at East Anglia, Claire Thomson, Carol O'Sullivan, Catherine Fuller, and  Scott MacKenzie will direct the conference. Follow the link above to learn more about the conference and bookmark it to keep up with the conference as it develops.

Rhonda Wilcox Gives Invited Lecture on Buffy at the University of Louisville

Slayage co-editor Rhonda Wilcox gave an invited lecture on April 22 on BtVS at the Commonwealth Center for Humanities and Society at the University of Louisville.

Red Noise to be Published

Red Noise, a third collection of essays on BtVS, edited by Lisa Parks (University of California at Santa Barbara) and Elana Levine (University of Wisconsin), will be published later this year by Duke University Press. Go here to see a table of contents.

Special Issue Call for Papers

In a future number of Slayage we would like to publish essays on each of the six seasons of BtVS. If you would like to write one of these essays--each a comprehensive discussion of a season considered as a whole--please let us know at buffystudies@hotmail.com . Essays submitted will be reviewed by the board, which will select the best for publication in Slayage.(go here to see how to submit ). If you already wrote to volunteer to write one of these essays, please write us again to announce you intensions. (We apologize if we did not respond to your original e-mail.)

The editors of Slayage have taken note recently that a good number of dissertations and theses on BtVS have been completed or are in progress. If you are the author of such Buffy scholarship, will you please write us about your work (david.lavery@gmail.com)? If possible, send us a copy of your abstract as a Word or .rtf attachment. Thanks.