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
Maja Bajac-Carter is a doctoral candidate in Communication Studies
at Kent State University. Her research focuses on gender, identity,
and media studies. She is a contributor to We Are What We
Sell: How Advertising Shapes American Life . . . and Always
Has (2014).
Norma Jones has a PhD in communication and information from Kent
State University. She is an editor of Rowman & Littlefield's Sports
Icons and Issues in Popular Culture book series and is coeditor of
Aging Heroes: Growing Old in Popular Culture (Rowman & Littlefield,
2015).
Bob Batchelor teaches in the Media, Journalism & Film department at
Miami University and is the founding editor of the Popular Culture
Studies Journal. Batchelor edits the Contemporary American
Literature and Cultural History of Television book series for
Rowman & Littlefield. Among his books are John Updike: A Critical
Biography (2013), Gatsby: The Cultural History of the Great
American Novel (Rowman & Littlefield, 2014), and Mad Men: A
Cultural History (Rowman & Littlefield, 2016).
The release of Heroines of Comic Books and Literature...could not
have been timelier.... The well-organized thought processes
throughout should prove to be refreshing to the comic book fan,
even though it reveals some uneasy, though necessary truths, of
these heroine portrayals.... Heroines of Comic Books and Literature
boasts nineteen succinct chapters by a collection of authors who
aptly command authority in their respective areas of expertise. A
notable inclusion of comic artist, writer, and Will Eisner Hall of
Fame inductee Trina Robbins adds panache to an already credible
list of educators and scholars. The variety of case studies and
methodologies will certainly satisfy those who want more from their
popular culture analysis. Collections like this can potentially
fall into the trap of stylistic inconsistency, but the editors may
be credited for a book filled with direct, punchy writing that
provokes the reader to want more from each chapter. This book is
perhaps best described as an academic’s Jezebel — it approaches
popular culture in a manner that welcomes discussions and is
appropriately critical, well researched, even-tempered, and, is
still, wildly passionate.
*Journal of American Culture*
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