This book combines the academic and practical aspects of teaching by exploring the ways in which Buffy the Vampire Slayer is taught, internationally, through both interdisciplinary and discipline-based approaches. Essays describe how Buffy can be used to explain--and encourage further discussion of--television's narrative complexity, archetypal characters, morality, feminism, identity, ethics, non-verbal communication, film production, media and culture, censorship, and Shakespeare, among other topics.
The essays were generally good, but I've been using Buffy in the classroom for almost ten years now, so there wasn't much new to me here. Many of the essays focused (perhaps too heavily) on why the instructors use Buffy and not quite enough on how. In some cases, the approach simply doesn't apply to what I'll be doing in my class. Still, if you're considering using Buffy in your classroom and have never done it before, start with this book, and it will give you some really good weaponry to add to your arsenal!
Some chapters of this are more engaging than others, and this is obviously influenced by whatever your area of interest may be. As a secondary English teacher, I obviously found the high school chapters more useful than the college based ones. In saying that, all the chapters had interesting insights and ideas.