Fanpire ─ The Twilight Saga and the Women Who Love It

"Fanpire: The Twilight Saga and the Women Who Love It is a mixture of journalism and cultural analysis that looks at one of the most successful cultural franchises in recent memory, Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series. Over 110 million copies of the books have sold worldwide, with translations into 37 languages. The release of New Moon in November 2009 was the third largest box-office opening ever. Millions check websites like the Twilight Lexicon and Twilight Moms for up-to-the minute information about the books and films. MTV even has a Twilight correspondent. Erzen investigates how the series, which appeals to a great extent to conservative Christian girls and women, sheds light on the yearnings and dissatisfactions of its readers. She also explores what obsessive interest in the Twilight romance among middle-aged women says about the failure of marriage as a romantic institution, how it affects the thinking of young women faced with sexual decision-making in their own lives, and how it embodies the idea that women are already empowered and thus in no need of feminism. This book is written in an entertaining and accessible style to appeal to parents, teachers, and friends of Twilight fans who earnestly wish to understand why their daughters and peers are so obsessed. While the book is a critical assessment of Twilight's ideas of romance, relationships, sexuality, religion, and the commerce surrounding the franchise, Erzen is respectful of fans' experiences and the pleasures they take in the books and fandom. With wit and candor, Erzen explores how she herself is appalled by the series' ideology and yet irresistably drawn in by its over-the-top romantic appeal. Twi-hards, as obsessed fans call themselves, are an active community, both online and in-person. Erzen's research for Fanpire has involved not only long hours in chat rooms, but has taken her to Twilight conventions, to movie premieres put on by the fans, to Forks, the small Washington town that serves as the setting of the saga, and has involved interviews with dozens of fans. She will be able to do a lot of Internet-based promotion to all the fans she has met in her research--as well as to the relgious studies and women's studies worlds, online and in academia. *65,000 words"--

Tanya Erzen is an associate professor of comparative religious studies at Ohio State University. Her work has appeared in the Nation, the Boston Globe, and the Washington Post. She is the author of Straight to Jesus: Sexual and Christian Conversions in the Ex-Gay Movement, which won the Gustave O. Arlt Award and the Ruth Benedict Prize. She is a recipient of a National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship and a visiting scholar at the Simpson Center for the Humanities at the University of Washington. She lives in Seattle.

From the Hardcover edition.