Theorizing Twilight: Critical Essays on What's at Stake in a Post-Vampire World

Since the publication of Twilight in 2005, Stephenie Meyer's four-book saga about the tortured relationship between human heroine Bella Swan and her vampire love Edward Cullen has become a world-wide sensation--inciting screams of delight, sighs of derision, and fervent pronouncements. Those looking deeper into its pages and on screen can find intriguing subtexts about everything from gender, race, sexuality, and religion.

The 15 essays in this book examine the texts, the films, and the fandom, exploring the series' cultural reach and offering one of the first thorough analyses of the saga.

Maggie Parke has a PhD in fan management and event film adaptation from Bangor University in Wales, United Kingdom. She has published in the Journal of Gaming and Virtual Worlds and is a lecturer and studio director for Signum Studios, a part of Signum University. She also works in international education, and is a consultant for fan management and project development.

Natalie Wilson is a gender studies professor at Cal State San Marcos in San Diego, California. Her blogs include Dead Ends and Professor, What if.