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This edited collection offers a variety of perspectives focusing on representation of women as heroines across printed media. In addition, the book extends the discussion of heroines for the broader audience, which provides a much needed, more nuanced discussion of this topic across American popular culture. Contributors go beyond the expected account of women as mothers, wives, warriors, goddesses, and damsels in distress, to provide innovative analysis that situates heroines within culture, revealing them as tough, self-sufficient, and breaking the bounds of gender expectations in places readers may not have expected. Addressing portrayals from Marvel and DC universe, manga, Jack London's novels, to real-life heroes of Iraq war, this is an indispensable book for scholars in rhetoric, literature, popular culture, and others interested in women's issues.
List of contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
I. Literature
Chapter 1: To Heck with the Village: Fantastic Heroines, Journey and Return, Sandra J. Lindow
Chapter 2: From Duckling to Swan: What Makes a Twilight Heroine Strong, Tricia Clasen
Chapter 3: Salem's Daughters: Witchcraft, Justice, and the Heroine in Popular Culture, Lauren Lemley
Chapter 4: Heroine: Christina of Markyate, K. A. Laity
Chapter 5: The Bohemian Gypsy, Another Body to Sell: Deciphering Esmeralda in Popular Culture, Adina Schneeweis
Chapter 6: Writing Women in War: Speaking Through, About, And For Female Soldiers in Iraq, Christina M. Smith
II. Exotic, Foreign, Familiar, and Queer
Chapter 7: The Borderland Construction of Latin American and Latina Heroines in Contemporary Visual Media, Mauricio Espinoza
Chapter 8: Janissary: An Orientalist Heroine Or a Role Model For Muslim Women?, Itir Erhart & Hande Eslen-Ziya
Chapter 9: Representations of Motherhood in X-men, Christopher Paul Wagenheim
Chapter 10: Negotiating Life Spaces: How Marriage Marginalized Storm, Anita McDaniel
Chapter 11: The Mother of All Superheroes: Idealization of Femininity in Wonder Woman, Sharon Zechowski & Caryn E. Neumann
Chapter 12: Wonder Woman: Lesbian or Dyke? Paradise Island as a Woman's Community, Trina Robbins
Chapter 13: Homicidal Lesbian Terrorists to Crimson Caped Crusaders: How Folk and Mainstream Lesbian Heroes Queer Cultural Space, April Jo Murphy
III. Contemporary American Graphic Novels/Comics
Chapter 14: Punching Holes in the Sky: Carol Danvers and the Potential of Superheroinism, Nathan Miczo
Chapter 15: Jumping Rope Naked: John Byrne, Metafiction, and the Comics Code, Roy Cook
Chapter 16: Invisible, Tiny, and Distant: The First Female Superheroes of the Marvel Age of Comics, Joseph Darowski
Chapter 17: Heroines Aplenty, but None My Mother Would Know: Marvel's Lack of An Iconic Superheroine , T. Keith Edmunds
Chapter 18: Liminality and Capitalism in Spider-Woman and Wonder Woman, or: How to Make Stronger (i.e. male) Two Super Powerful Women, Fernando Gabriel Pagnoni Berns
Chapter 19: Empowerment as Transgression: The Rise and Fall of The Black Cat in Kevin Smith's The Evil That Men Do, Michael R. Kramer
Index
About the Editors and Contributors
About the author
Edited by Maja Bajac-Carter; Norma Jones and Bob Batchelor - Contributions by Sandra J. Lindow; Tricia Clasen; Lauren Lemley; K. A. Laity; Adina Schneeweis; Christina M. Smith; Mauricio Espinoza; Itir Erhart; Hande Eslen-Ziya; Christopher Paul Wagenheim;
