Edited Collection
Netflix’s Chilling Adventures of Sabrina: Hell’s Under New Management
Edited by Cori Mathis, Stephanie A. Graves, and Melissa Tyndall
Bloomsbury (formerly Rowman & Littlefield), 2023
This edited collection offers interdisciplinary perspectives on Netflix’s Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (2018-2020), 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, the Gothic, and melodrama offers a compelling approach to the coming-of-age narrative and makes CAoS a significant part of the teen television canon.
Chapters & Contributors:
Introduction: Something Wickedly Different This Way Comes: Netflix’s Chilling Adventures of Sabrina
Cori Mathis, Stephanie A. Graves, and Melissa Tyndall
Chapter 1: The Revised Image of the Witch: Historical Archetypes Revamped for the Contemporary Online Audience
Farhana Irshad
Chapter 2: The Inclusive Witch in Chilling Adventures of Sabrina
Diana Celeste Etain and Cori Mathis
Chapter 3: Controlling the Female Body: Foucault, Catholic Ireland, and Chilling Adventures of Sabrina
Shannon Hughes Spence and Cori Mathis
Chapter 4: Proliferating Feminisms and the Irruption of the Material in Chilling Adventures of Sabrina
Tp Coughlin
Chapter 5: The Devil You Know?: Feminism and Postmodern Pastiche of Satanism and the Infernal in Chilling Adventures of Sabrina
Alice Capstick
Chapter 6: Giving Satanic and Divine Patriarchy a Run for Their Money: Hybridity, Liminality, and Female Empowerment in Chilling Adventures of Sabrina
Luisa Fernanda Grijalva-Maza
Chapter 7: From Having to Choose to Being Chosen: Analyzing Sabrina as a Mixed (Race) Being
Lisa Delacruz Combs, Nicole Neifert, and Marc P. Johnston-Guerrero
Chapter 8: “I want freedom and power”: The Allegory of Queer Rhetorics in Chilling Adventures of Sabrina
Stephanie A. Graves
Chapter 9: Empowering Liminality in Chilling Adventures of Sabrina
Laura Davidel
Chapter 10: “I’m sick of being the afterthought, the joke”: Hilda Spellman’s Empowering Domesticity in Netflix’s Chilling Adventures of Sabrina
Katie E. Cline
Chapter 11: The Gothic Mother and Daughter in Chilling Adventures of Sabrina
Melissa Tyndall
Chapter 12: Devouring Women, Consuming Men: Cats, Mice, and the World of Sabrina Spellman
David Rosen
Chapter 13: “What’s needed here is a fundamental shift in thinking”: Chilling Adventures of Sabrina and the Complexities of the Teen Drama
Cori Mathis
Chapter 14: The Legacy, Liberation, and Limitations of Gender and Genre in Chilling Adventures of Sabrina
Lori Bindig Yousman
Chapter 15: The Anachronistic Bricolage and Eternal Autumn Aesthetic in Chilling Adventures of Sabrina
Daria Romanova and Maggie Webster
Chapter 16: Intersecting Narratives and the Book(s) of the Beast: The Multiplicity of Textual Engagements and Chilling Adventures of Sabrina
Alissa Burger
Reviews
“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