About the Book
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
About the Author :
Andrew J. Byers serves as lecturer in New Testament at Ridley Hall in the Cambridge Theological Federation and as an affiliated lecturer in the Faculty of Divinity at the University of Cambridge.
Adam Powell is a lecturer in medical humanities in the Department of Theology & Religion at Durham University (UK).
Review :
Modern cultures and society frequently consider theology and religion as if they belong to a long-gone nostalgia of another world, yet—as the essays which Byers and Powell have compiled show—the universe of Stranger Things draws freely from the wells found in that other world. Stranger Things provides a rich and fertile ground to explore these themes. Through a wide-ranging series of essays and reflections, Religion, Theology and Stranger Things does a wonderful job of translating and working through both the “Upside Down” of Stranger Things in Hawkins, Indiana into the “Right Side Up” of our own world. It is an excellent volume thinking through the religion and theology of such a popular series which has sparked widespread cultural nostalgia for the 1980s. May this volume do the same for reflections on our theology and religion.
Andrew Byers and Adam Powell have curated an engaging and entertaining volume that opens a portal into the religious dimension of the hit series Stranger Things. The international ensemble of contributors offers profound, multi-disciplinary insights into the show’s exploration of identity, monsters, nostalgia, and the human condition in the Upside Down. Each essay expertly weaves together pop-culture analysis with sociological, religious, or theological reflection, making it both a go-to resource and a must-read for fans and scholars alike.
