160 scholars from all over the world attended the two-day Blood, Text and Fears conference at the University of East Anglia recently.

Although there were no star guests, endless autograph queues or fancy dress parades, great fun was had analysing Buffy in relation to Sartre, Shakespeare, sexuality, music, masculinity and monsters.

Organisers from the School of Language, Linguistics and Translation Studies, the School of English and American Studies, and the British Centre for Literary Translation at the UEA had originally planned a small conference, but had apparently been overwhelmed by the response they received from the show's admirers.

Professor Andrew Higson, Dean of the School of English and American Studies, said there had been "international interest" because it was the first academic event of its kind.

"I think that is testimony to the cult of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and to the talents of our local cultists. We have people here from the US, Italy, Australia and Canada, as well as from the UK, and it seems a wonderfully rich but streamlined occasion, and the idea of having a whole conference given to a TV programme and its spin-offs is absolutely fantastic. There are not many texts that would generate that kind of response."

Janet Garton, the outgoing Dean of the School of Language, Linguistics and Translation Studies, said it was "exciting and really rather amazing. I must confess to having seen a few Buffy programmes, usually because my youngest son is a fan, but now there will be much more reason for an intellectual justification for watching."