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.

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.

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.