Sundays in October through November 1st, at 2pm in AUX | Free screenings and lectures
Scroll down for this Sunday’s episode and lecturer info
Buffy the Vampire Slayer (BtVS) was a television series created by Joss Whedon which aired on the WB network and later UPN from 1997-2003. It predominantly starred Sarah Michelle Gellar (Buffy), Anthony Stewart Head (Giles), Alyson Hannigan (Willow), Nicholas Brendan (Xander), Amber Benson (Tara), Kristine Sutherland (Joyce), David Boreanaz (Angel) and James Marsters (Spike). The series is most commonly known as subverting the horror genre as we follow Buffy the Vampire Slayer through battling vampires, demons and several apocalypses.
Please join us for a month long intensive Lecture & Screening series featuring Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Vox Populi member Beth Heinly has invited seven lecturers; Megan Carr, Jon McCabe, Homay King, Ann Cornell, James Myers, Lynn Dorwaldt and Kate Kraczon, each from a varied arena of expertise including academia, art, curation, geekdom, podcasting and writing to guide this very special Buffy ReWatch in a most scholarly fashion.
The Buffyverse, a term coined by the Buffy fandom describing the Buffy universe, is a frequently used springboard topic for discussion among academia from high school to college courses providing many articles, essays, and bibliographies for perusal on whatever sparks the Buffy fan’s curiosity. Watch along and immerse yourself in the world of Buffy Academia led by lectures unique to each season. Following the lecture there will be roundtable discussions that discuss specifications within the screened episodes covering character development, language, pop cultural references and fashion. Each week the series will be recorded for a podcast to air midweek, so if you have to miss a Sunday, tune in! Please check in closer to the premiere on October 4th for more details on our podcast.
This is a free event. We will have snacks à la Buffy and drinks to cure whatever ails you from your Saturday nights “patrolling”. Do be mindful that we highly encourage cosplay for attendees.
Happening every Sunday in October at 2pm with the finale on Sunday November 1st at 2pm. Scroll through our calendar to see what episodes we’ll be featuring, meet your teacher and check out links to suggested reading materials.
Lecturers (in order of appearance): Beth Heinly, Megan Carr, Jon McCabe, Homay King, Ann Cornell, James Myers & Kate Kraczon.
*Important to note that due the nature of this lecture series, there are spoilers. We recommend this event series as a ReWatch. If you would like to join us anyway as your first time watching the show keep in mind of spoilers. Alternatively, you can try to watch 22 episodes of television in one week.
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Sunday November 1st 2PM
Buffy ReWatch: Abridged Version, Screening & Lecture Series
Once More, with Feeling (Season 6, Episode 7)
Villains (Season 6, Episode 20)
Conversations with Dead People (Season 7, Episode 7)
w/ Kate Kraczon
Someone has to be the witch
Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s move from the WB to UPN for the 6th and 7th seasons shifted the series into darker territory, particularly for protagonists Buffy Summers and Willow Rosenberg. More violent, confusing, and ethically muddled than previous seasons, fans have long complained about this turn, while discussions of power and patriarchy dominate academic readings. The Gothic disrupts, and in this session we will expand a reading of disruption through feminist rhetoric and “The Dead/Evil Lesbian Cliché”; the body at risk of rupture (and rape, a recurring theme in these seasons); and the supernatural disruption of song and dance in Buffy’s celebrated musical episode.
Suggested readings:
Lynne Y. Edwards, Elizabeth L. Rambo, and James B. South, “Preface: At Sixes and Sevens in Sunnydale”.
Gregory Erickson and Jennifer Lemberg, “Bodies and Narrative in Crises: Figures of Rupture and Chaos in Seasons Six and Seven”.
Rhonda Wilcox, “Singing and Dancing and Burning and Dying: Once More, with Textual Feeling”.
Lisa M. Vetere, “The Rage of Willow: Malefic Witchcraft Fantasy in Buffy the Vampire Slayer”.
Brandy Ryan, “’It’s Complicated…Because of Tara’: Histories, Identity Politics, and the Straight White Male Author”.
Susan Payne-Mulliken and Valerie Renegar,“Buffy Never Goes It Alone: The Rhetorical Construction of Sisterhood in the Final Season”.
Kate Kraczon joined the ICA in Philadelphia in 2008 from the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. She is currently organizing the first museum exhibition of the work of Becky Suss, as well as a survey of Angel Nevarez and Valerie Tevere’s collaborative practice. She recently worked with Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme on the first North American presentation of their project The Incidental Insurgents (2012–present) at ICA (2015), and commissioned the major video installation Easternsports (2014) by Alex Da Corte and Jayson Musson. In 2014 Kraczon oversaw the museum’s fiftieth anniversary exhibition, ICA@50, which included projects she commissioned by Elisabeth Subrin and Linda Yun, as well as Mary Ellen Carroll, Simon Kim, and Bryan Zanisnik with the Philadelphia non-profit RAIR (Recycled Artist in Residency) and their co-founder, artist William Dufala. Previous exhibitions include Karla Black’s first major museum exhibition in the United States (2013); First Among Equals (2012, co-curated with Alex Klein); One is the loneliest number (2011); Summer Studio with Anthony Campuzano (2010); Touch Sensitive: Anthony Campuzano (2009); and Asking Not Telling (2009). She has overseen ICA’s annual juried video exhibition, Open Video Call, since 2008. Kraczon was the receiving curator for the traveling exhibitions Dear Nemesis, Nicole Eisenman 1993–2013 (2014), Readykeulous by Ridykeulous: This is What Liberation Feels Like™ (2014), Jeremy Deller: Joy in People (2012), and Tim Rollins and K.O.S.: A History (2009).
