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Focusing on the wildly successful Twilight series, this collection of scholarly essays examines the phenomenon from diverse theoretical and methodological perspectives. Particular attention is paid to cultural, social, and economic aspects of the series and to the recurrent messages about youth, gender roles, romance, and sexuality. Essays discuss race and religion, and provide audience analyses of young adult, adult, anti-, and international fans. Other chapters are political-economic examinations into celebrity, tourism, and publishing. With new research by established and rising scholars, this volume is a significant contribution to the growing field of youth studies and complements existing feminist cultural analyses of media texts.
List of contents
Contents: Melissa A. Click/Jennifer Stevens Aubrey/ Elizabeth Behm-Morawitz: Introduction - Margaret M. Toscano: Mormon Morality and Immortality in Stephenie Meyer's Twilight Series - Melissa Ames: Twilight Follows Tradition: Analyzing «Biting» Critiques of Vampire Narratives for Their Portrayals of Gender and Sexuality - Natalie Wilson: Civilized Vampires Versus Savage Werewolves: Race and Ethnicity in the Twilight Series - Carrie Anne Platt: Cullen Family Values: Gender and Sexual Politics in the Twilight Series - Danielle Dick McGeough: Twilight and Transformations of Flesh: Reading the Body in Contemporary Youth Culture - Kathryn Kane: A Very Queer Refusal: The Chilling Effect of the Cullens' Heteronormative Embrace - Tricia Clasen: Taking a Bite Out of Love: The Myth of Romantic Love in the Twilight Series - Elizabeth Behm-Morawitz/ Melissa A. Click/Jennifer Stevens Aubrey: Relating to Twilight: Fans' Responses to Love and Romance in the Vampire Franchise - Cathy Leogrande: My Mother, Myself: Mother-Daughter Bonding via the Twilight Saga - Juli Parrish: Back to the Woods: Narrative Revisions in New Moon Fan Fiction at Twilighted - Inger-Lise Kalviknes Bore/Rebecca Williams: Transnational Twilighters: A Twilight Fan Community in Norway - Jessica Sheffield/Elyse Merlo: Biting Back: Twilight Anti-Fandom and the Rhetoric of Superiority - Jennifer Stevens Aubrey/Scott Walus/Melissa A. Click: Twilight and the Production of the 21st Century Teen Idol - Marianne Martens: Consumed by Twilight: The Commodification of Young Adult Literature - Cynthia Willis-Chun: Touring the Twilight Zone: Cultural Tourism and Commodification on the Olympic Peninsula - Elana Levine: Afterword.
About the author
The Editors: Melissa A. Click is Assistant Professor of Communication at the University of Missouri. Her research interests include audience and fan studies and ideological analysis of popular culture, particularly concerning gender, race, class, and sexuality.
Jennifer Stevens Aubrey is Assistant Professor of Communication at the University of Missouri. She studies the ways in which media influence young people¿s self-perceptions, including sexuality, body image, and gender roles.
Elizabeth Behm-Morawitz is Assistant Professor of Communication at the University of Missouri. She studies media representations of gender and race/ethnicity, and the effects of these portrayals on individuals and society.
Summary
Bitten by Twilight
Report
«This lively collection of essays explores the narrative riches of the Twilight stories themselves even as it looks seriously at the ways they have been marketed and taken up both by their passionate fans and by critics who see them as evidence of a range of cultural and political problems.» (Janice Radway, Author of 'Reading the Romance: Women, Patriarchy, and Popular Literature', Professor of Communication Studies/Rhetoric and Gender Studies and American Studies, Northwestern University)
«Team Edward. Team Jacob. Twilighters, Twihards, and Twilight Moms. Merchandise from clothing to jewelry to BarbieTM dolls. 'Bitten by Twilight' critically examines the extraordinary franchise of Twilight and pushes our thinking in new directions. In this diverse and engaging collection, we learn what it is about Twilight that both appeals to us and enrages us.» (Sarah Banet-Weiser, Author of 'Kids Rule! Nickelodeon and Consumer Citizenship', Associate Professor, Annenberg School for Communication and American Studies and Ethnicity, University of Southern California)
«Bitten by Twilight presents us with an enlightened look into the world of vampires, werewolves, and fan culture and romance narratives. The editors and contributors to this book appreciate the significance of the stories, movies, and artifacts as a culturally gendered phenomenon and present a variety of lenses through which to appreciate this popular franchise.» (Norma Pecora, Author of 'The Business of Children's Entertainment', Professor, School of Media Arts and Studies, Ohio University)
