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In a society that increasingly touts post-racial and post-feminist discourses, the trope of monstrosity becomes a way to critically examine contemporary meanings around race, class, gender, sexuality, and ability. Focusing on ways in which historically marginalized groups appropriate monstrosity as a means of resistance, as well as on how we can understand oppression and privilege through monstrosity, this book offers another way to conceptualize the politics of representation. Through critical analyses of experiences of women of color in the academy, the media framing of alleged Aurora shooter James Holmes, the use of monstrosity in unpublished work from the Gloria Anzaldúa archives, post-feminist discourses in American Mary and The Lords of Salem, and Kanye West's strategic employment of ideologies of monstrosity, this book offers new ways to think about Otherness in this contemporary moment.
List of contents
Contents: Monstrous Femininity: Constructions of Women of Color in the Academy - James Holmes and the Monstrosity of Whiteness - Chicana Feminist Legacies of Monstrosity in the Gloria Anzaldúa Archive - American Mary and The Lords of Salem: Post-Feminist Nightmares - From College Dropout to Monster: Kanye West and the Politics of Monstrosity - Monstrous Endings.
About the author
Bernadette Marie Calafell (PhD, University of North Carolina) is Full Professor of Communication Studies at the University of Denver. She is author of
Latina/o Communication Studies: Theorizing Performance (Peter Lang, 2007) and co-editor (with Michelle A. Holling) of
Latina/o Discourse in Vernacular Spaces: Somos de Una Voz? (2011).
Summary
Through critical analyses of experiences of women of color in the academy, the media framing of alleged Aurora shooter James Holmes, the use of monstrosity in unpublished work from the Gloria Anzaldua archives, post-feminist discourses and Kanye West's strategic employment of ideologies of monstrosity, this book offers new ways to think about Otherness in this contemporary moment.
Report
«This book represents truly outstanding and groundbreaking scholarship. By interweaving popular culture with her lived experiences, Bernadette Marie Calafell has added an important new dimension to our thinking about monsters and culture.»
(Kendall R. Phillips, Professor and Associate Dean,
Communication and Rhetorical Studies, Syracuse University)
