WRAL has an article which they, at least, have the good sense to classify under “Strange News“:

A professor at Ursinus College in suburban Philadelphia thinks “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” is worthy of serious academic study. The TV show went off the air in 2003, but Professor Lynne Edwards is still leading scholarship about it. …

Full disclosure: I am a fan of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” myself, but notwithstanding, I would be loathe to subject myself to academics blathering on about Buffy, and even less willing to let them do so under the mantle of university professor supposedly presenting college-worthy material.

Well, I looked up Prof. Edwards, and I found a “Slayage Conference” in which she makes a presentation. Utterly predictable, says the author of (emphasis added)

[C]ourse-description mainstays often used to lend the impression of thoughtfulness and rigor [include] the inevitable social-guilt redirection (… e.g., What does what we say about this pop-culture subject really say about us and our society in terms of race, gender, class, sexual preference, imperialism, consumer culture, ad nauseam?).

Because Edwards’ approach is, well, (emphasis added)

This paper explores the use of Buffy the Vampire Slayer as the primary text for a lower-level seminar designed to explore issues of race, gender, and class in television through viewings and discussion of scholarly Buffy research.