New Edited Collection on Chilling Adventures of Sabrina
Netflix’s Chilling Adventures of Sabrina:
Hell’s Under New Management
Out April 2023 from Lexington Books
It’s always a delight to be able to announce a publication, and now that proofs have been returned, it feels like a good moment to welcome this new edited collection into the world!
This collection—co-edited alongside my inimitable colleagues and friends, Cori Mathis and Melissa Tyndall—features approaches to the Netflix series Chilling Adventures of Sabrina from a variety of perspectives, including historical, sociological, feminist, queer, and genre approaches to the text. It was such an honor that so many incredible scholars trusted us with their work, and Lexington Books—and especially our editor, Judith Lakamper—have been absolutely splendid to work with.
From the Roman & Littlefield website:
This book presents interdisciplinary perspectives on Netflix’s Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, situating the series within contemporary discourses of genre, form, historical place, ideology, and aesthetics. The essays in this collection argue that the series’ unique blend of horror, melodrama, and the Gothic to approach the coming-of-age narrative make it a significant part of the teen television canon.
The book blurbs are also pretty stunning—blurbing is often a labor intensive and thankless task, but Rebecca Janicker, Rhonda V. Wilcox, and Cynthia Burkhead—all brilliant scholars of media and television—gave the collection some truly stunning blurbs that I wanted to reproduce, if only in part to show how incredibly kind they are:
Responding ably to the contemporary taste for teen drama and for horror, Netflix’s Chilling Adventures of Sabrina: Hell’s Under New Management offers a timely and absorbing examination of the spellbinding Netflix show. With essays on gender, feminism and identity, as well as on genre tropes and portrayals of witchcraft, this collection makes a valuable contribution to our understanding of the important relationship between popular culture and real-world experience.
— Rebecca Janicker, University of Portsmouth
Cultural productions have long represented a society’s conception of the witch. Netflix’s Chilling Adventures of Sabrina: Hell’s Under New Management is a superb examination of the program’s contribution to capturing the evolved, 21st Century witch. With essays focusing closely on issues of feminism, identity, and gender, the collection stands as an extensive study of the contemporary witch in popular culture and, by extension, an outstanding examination of the contemporary society for which it is produced. The final section uncovers the formal complexities that allow Chilling Adventures of Sabrina to be both meaningful and highly watchable. This highly accessible collection is essential reading for fans of the show and television scholars alike.
— Cynthia Burkhead, retired professor, University of North Alabama
Chilling Adventures of Sabrina dances between dark and light, and this book is a good dance partner. Placing the series in the larger context of teen drama and horror, these essays celebrate the strengths and assess the drawbacks of CAoS. The writers explore aspects of gender, race, queerness, feminism, and aesthetics with careful attention to relevant scholarship. This volume adds significantly to television studies.
— Rhonda V. Wilcox, professor emeritus, Gordon State College and author of Grimm’s Trailer Full of Secrets: Character and Gender in the Television Series
I can’t express in words how grateful I am—to my amazing co-editors, to the contributors, to Lexington and to Judith, and to Drs. Janicker, Burkhead, and Wilcox for their kind reviews.
The collection comes out in April, and you can read more about it here.
