Boffins get their teeth into Buffy

The conference at the University of East Anglia in Norwich (UEA) on Saturday and Sunday will give people the chance to discuss and deconstruct the popular cult television series which stars Sarah Michelle Gellar.

According to co-organiser Claire Thomson, of the UEA, the Blood, Text and Fears conference has attracted a huge volume of interest.

"We were astonished to be inundated with submissions from scholars of all ages and degrees of distinction, from all over the world," she said.

Experts on film, drama, education, sociology, linguistics experts, law, philosophy and theology, will present their perspectives on Buffy and its successful spin-off series Angel.

Co-organiser Scott MacKenzie said: "One aim is to investigate the cultural significance of the two shows.

"We might ask, for example, how and why TV shows become commercial, multi-media and international phenomena.

"Another goal is to try to break down categories such as high-brow and popular culture - why shouldn't well-made television tell us just as much about ourselves and our world as canonical literature?"

The conference has already received papers analysing Buffy in relation to Sartre, Shakespeare, sexuality, music, masculinity and monsters.

Blood, Text and Fears is organised by the School of Language, Linguistics and Translation Studies, the School of English and American Studies, and the British Centre for Literary Translation at UEA.