Slayage 12.2/13.1 [40-41], Winter 2014/Spring 2015
Edited by Rhonda V. Wilcox and David Lavery

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Jessica Hautsch (Suffolk County Community College), Masani McGee (University of Rochester), and Samira Nadkarni (University of Aberdeen)

• "Much Ado About Whedon: Report on the 6th Biennial Slayage Conference"

Lewis Call (California Polytechnic State University)

• "'That Weird, Unbearable Delight': Representations of Alternative Sexualities in Joss Whedon's Astonishing X-Men Comics"

Bronwen Calvert (Open University)

• "Inside Out: Motherhood as Demonic Possession in Angel"

 Janet Brennan Croft (Rutgers University)

• "Giving Evil a Name: Buffy’s Glory, Angel’s Jasmine, Blood Magic, and Name Magic"

Jessica Hautsch (Suffolk County Community College)

• "'What the Geisha has gotten into you?': Colorblindness, Orientalist Stereotypes, and the Problem of Global Feminism in Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season Eight"

Greg Knehans (UNC-Greensboro)

• "Buffy, Betrayal, and the Ethic of Truths"

Darren Lester (Independent Scholar)

• "'Don’t Speak Latin in Front of the Books': Latin as the Lingua Franca of Magic in Buffy the Vampire Slayer"

Margaret Shane (University of Alberta)

• "River Tam as Schizoanalysand in Joss Whedon’s Firefly Narratives"

Katherine E. Whaley (University of Kentucky)

• “'There’s nothing wrong with my body': Xander as a Study in Defining Capability of the Disabled Body in Buffy the Vampire Slayer "

Slayage 13.2 [42], Summer 2015
Rhonda V. Wilcox and David Lavery, Editors / Shiloh Carroll, Assistant Editor

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FROM THE EDITOR

Rhonda V. Wilcox, The Changing Names of Slayage (“I Think I Can Name Myself”)

FROM THE GUEST EDITORS

Michael Goodrum and Philip Smith, "Lightin’ Out For the Library: A Firefly/Serenity Special Issue"

• Michael Goodrum is a lecturer in Modern History at Canterbury Christ Church University.  He is co-editor of Firefly Revisited: Essays on Joss Whedon’s Classic Series (Rowman & Littlefield, 2015) and has published articles on comic-books in Social History, Literature Compass, and Studies in Comics.  He also has chapters on superheroes in several edited collections and is currently finishing a book on superheroes and the American self, to be published by Ashgate.  Michael Goodrum lives in Oxford with his wife, daughter, and collection of bass guitars.
• Philip Smith completed his Ph.D. with Loughborough University. He teaches English Literature, Philosophy, and Theatre Arts at Tunas Muda International School, Jakarta. His work has been published in The Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, The International Journal of Comics Art, The Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics, Literature Compass, The Journal of European Studies, Asian Theater Journal, and The Journal of Popular Culture. He contributed a chapter to The American Comic Book. He is co-editor for Firefly Revisited: Essays on Joss Whedon’s Classic Series.

ESSAYS

Jocelyn Sakal Froese and Laura Buzzard, “I Mean for Us to Live. The Alliance Won’t Have That”: New Frontierism and Biopower in Firefly/Serenity

• Jocelyn Sakal Froese is a Ph.D. candidate in literature and cultural studies at McMaster University. Her work is in queer and feminist theory, biopolitics, and coming of age graphic novels and visual narratives. She is an award winning teaching assistant, and runs “living theory,” the McMaster humanities theory podcast, which you can find on iTunes.

• Laura Buzzard lives and works in Hamilton, Ontario, and Nanaimo, BC. She holds an undergraduate degree in Liberal Studies and Women’s Studies from Vancouver Island University and a Master’s in English from McMaster University. She is currently a senior editor for the academic publisher Broadview Press. She is co-editor of Science and Society: An Anthology for Readers and Writers and The Broadview Anthology of Expository Prose, and a contributing editor for The Broadview Anthology of British Literature. Her academic interests include feminist and queer theory, science fiction, and utopia.

Dean A. Kowalski, “Letting that Belief Be Real Enough”: Shepherd Book as the Embodiment of Religious Non-Realism in the Whedonverse

• Dean A. Kowalski is an associate professor of philosophy at the University of Wisconsin-Waukesha, and regularly teaches philosophy of religion, Asian philosophy, and ethics.  He is the author of Classic Questions and Contemporary Film (2005) and Moral Theory at the Movies (2012), and the latter contains a political philosophy exploration of Serenity (2005) via Rawls’s “veil of ignorance.” He is the editor of Steven Spielberg and Philosophy (2008), The Philosophy of The X-Files (2009), and The Big Bang Theory and Philosophy (2012), and the coeditor of The Philosophy of Joss Whedon (2011). He has contributed more than a dozen chapters to pop culture volumes, including “Plato, Aristotle, and Joss on Being Horrible,” and “Seeking Authenticity in the Whedonverse.” Most recently, his chapters “’You are Welcome on My Boat, God Ain’t’: Ethical Foundations in the Whedonverse” and “’Where Does Any Story Begin?’: Book Chapters and Whedonverse Choices,” appear in the edited volumes Joss Whedon and Religion: Essays on an Angry Atheist’s Explorations of the Sacred (2013), and Firefly Revisited: Essays on Joss Whedon's Classic Series (2015), respectively.​

Samira Nadkarni, “I Believe in Something Greater than Myself”: What Authority, Terrorism, and Resistance Have Come to Mean in the Whedonverses

• Samira Nadkarni's publications trace her interest in postmodern poetry and performance, Whedon studies, hermeneutics, ethics, neo/colonialism, fan studies, and digital texts. Her writing on the Whedonverses focuses primarily on issues of humanistic ethics such as memory, race, and intersecting power structures. She currently serves on the editorial board of Watcher Junior: The Undergraduate Journal of Whedon Studies, is a guest contributor to the i love e-poetry project, and has creative writing published in New Writing Dundee, Grund Lit, and Causeway Magazine. She and Ensley Guffey will be co-editing a collection of essays on War and the Whedonverses, forthcoming from McFarland Press in 2018. She spends her spare time online, drawing people in with adorable pictures of her cat before yelling at them about how Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. could have been a better show. 

S. Evan Kreider, To Live and Die in the ’Verse: A Re-evaluation of Inara

• S. Evan Kreider is an associate professor of philosophy at the University of Wisconsin – Fox Valley.  His areas of research interest include ethics, aesthetics, and popular culture.  He is the co-editor of and contributing author for The Philosophy of Joss Whedon (2011), and a contributing author for The Philosophy of the X-Files (2009), Homer Simpson Ponders Politics: Popular Culture as Political Theory (2013), Jim Henson and Philosophy (forthcoming, 2015).

Erin Giannini,  “It Doesn’t Mean What You Think”: River Tam as Embodied Culture Jam

• Erin Giannini is an independent scholar who received her Ph.D. in television studies from the University of East Anglia, focused on new technology, product integration, and narrative. She currently serves as the Doctor Who area chair in the Science Fiction/Fantasy section of the Southwest Popular Culture Association. She has also published and presented work on religion, socioeconomics, technology, and corporate culture (sometimes all four at once) in series and films such as Dollhouse, Supernatural, Heroes, Serenity, and The Cabin in the Woods.