本論文探討著作及編史在美國電視連續劇《Buffy the Vampire Slayer》以視覺語言的體現。 《Buffy the Vampire Slayer》節目停止播放後通過非授權“粉絲作品”所享有的存在，已引起了對於共同著作、知識財產利用的可能性和限制的極多討論；本論文針對節目本身中權威性、非授權性著作之間的類似衝突。 論文特別注意“古老知識體” – 皮革精裝書、文字記錄 – 在這部晚期現代電視劇中堅持的出現，而解讀 《Buffy》為針對編史的節目。具體的說，它以 vamping 和slaying 的任務為爭取定義權的歷史主義編史計畫。 本論文探討《Buffy》如何將傳統歷史主義著作概念複雜化，通過視覺干涉其中人物之間編寫權威性、統一性歷史的無休止鬥爭。我以後殖民理論及其對歷史主義的評析為立論框架，目的在於顯示“權威性”知識在這個現代吸血鬼故事中的形式和形態能表示故事傳法所暗示的政治。

This paper addresses the representation of authorship and history writing in the visual language of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, an American TV show whose vibrant afterlife in unauthorized fan fiction has caused much discussion of the limits and possibilities of shared authorship and the appropriation of intellectual property. The project points at similar tensions between authoritative and unauthorized writing within the canonical text. Focusing on the insistent visual presence of “ancient” bodies of knowledge – leather bound books and black-letter print records – in this late modern television program, this paper will read BtVS as a show about history writing – more precisely, a show that suggests the tasks of vamping and slaying as historicist writing projects battling for the power of definition. I ask how the program complicates historicist concepts of authorship from within, and visually interferes with its protagonists'' never-ending struggle for defining authoritative, universal master versions of history. Framing my argument in post-colonial theory and especially the critique of historicism, I hope to show that the shape and form of “authoritative” knowledge in this modern vampire fiction can “speak” the politics implied in the ways stories are told.

Table of Contents
Abstract.....................................................................................................................i
Chinese Abstract.......................................................................................................ii
Acknowledgements..................................................................................................iii
Chapter 1: Introduction
“We start, unsurprisingly, with research”:
Reading Buffy the Vampire Slayer as a show about writing..........................1
Chapter 2:
Producing the “proofs of so wild a story”:
Vampire fictions, authorship, and history writing.........................................9
Chapter 3:
Bright flashes and “dark” documents:
The visual representation of history writing in Buffy the Vampire Slayer...37
Chapter 4: Conclusion
The afterlife of authorship...........................................................................68
Works cited..............................................................................................................73

Prof. Amie Parry
Prof. Spencer Lin