Description
Religion, Theology and Stranger Things: Studies from the Upside Down on Evil, Ethics, Horror, and Hope brings interdisciplinary analysis to the teeming spiritual side of the hit television series. With chapters from social scientists, historians, theologians, and Biblical scholars, the volume addresses the many different theological, religious, and supernatural themes present in the fictional world of Hawkins, Indiana. From spiritualism to secularism, Mormon gender norms to monsters of abnormality, rock & roll to Dungeons & Dragons, an international list of scholars come together to argue that imaginative realms like the one created by the Duffer brothers can serve to showcase and to scrutinize the common impulses and needs of our culture and ourselves. To venture into the darkness of the Upside Down is to venture into the depths of human experience. This volume explores the shadows and suggests a few paths back into the light.
Table of Contents
Introduction, Andrew J. Byers, Adam Powell
Part I: Spirits, Monsters, and Supernatural Science
Chapter 1: Comfort, Control, and Christmas Lights: The Types and Techniques of Spirit Communication in Stranger Things, Season One, Adam Powell
Chapter 2: The Myth of Stranger Things: A Structural Analysis of Monsters and Fears in Season One, Vivian Asimos
Chapter 3: Defining the Normal: Monstrosity in Stranger Things, Brandon Grafius
Chapter 4: Enchanted Science? The Supernatural Imagination of Stranger Things, Josh Reeves
Part II: History, (Pop) Culture, and Nostalgic Contexts
Chapter 5: Who Is Suzie Bingham? Gender and the 1980s Mormon Family in Stranger Things, Jana Reiss
Chapter 6: “Do Not Be Overcome by Evil”: Dungeons, Dragons, and the Satanic Panic in Stranger Things , Joseph P. Laycock
Chapter 7: Fighting Satan with the Devil’s Music? Subverting Suspicions of Demonic Influence on Rock ‘n’ Roll in Stranger Things Season 4, John Anthony Dunne
Chapter 8: Home, Nostalgia, and Stranger Things, Andrew Root
Chapter 9: Utopia, Intertextuality, and Liturgy: Nostalgia and Religion in Stranger Things, Melissa Conroy
Part III: Theology, Ethics and Biblical Themes
Chapter 10: “Peeking Behind Bauman’s Curtain”: A Theology and Ethics of Institutions in Stranger Things, Nathaniel A. Warne Adishian
Chapter 11: Max and the Magdalene: On Violence, Grief, and Trauma Under Patriarchy, Siobhán Jolley
Chapter 12: From Patmos to Hawkins: Slipping through Time and Space in Revelation and Stranger Things, Heather Macumber
Chapter 13: Can Anything Good Come out of Hawkins? Self, Place, Evil, and Salvation in John’s Gospel, Stranger Things, and the Secular Age, Andrew J. Byers
Afterword: What Would Suzy, Erica, and Steve Say? Concluding Reflections, Andrew J. Byers, Adam Powell
