Since the publication of Twilight in 2005, Stephenie Meyer's four-book saga about the tortured relationship between human heroine Bella Swan and her vampire love Edward Cullen has become a world-wide sensation--inciting screams of delight, sighs of derision, and fervent pronouncements. Those looking deeper into its pages and on screen can find intriguing subtexts about everything from gender, race, sexuality, and religion.

The 15 essays in this book examine the texts, the films, and the fandom, exploring the series' cultural reach and offering one of the first thorough analyses of the saga.