This book presents serious academic scholarship on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It differs from other works because it uses Buffy as a primary text and not as a secondary instrument to explore other concepts. In doing so, it demonstrates that popular culture studies should be approached with the same serious attention paid to classic philosophy and other long-established fields. Essays assemble the Buffy canon and explore how Buffy treats Shakespeare, comics, power, sisterhood, apocalyptic revisionism, folklore, feminism(s), redemption, patriarchy, identity and education.