Dangerous Dames

Heather L. Hundley (PhD, University of Utah) is Professor and Chair in the Department of Communication Studies at Middle Tennessee State University. She received the College Outstanding Research Award from her former institution. She has co-authored two books, coedited two books, and published in journals including New Media & Society, Communication Quarterly, and Communication Reports.Roberta Chevrette (PhD, Arizona State University) is Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication Studies at Middle Tennessee State University. She has published in journals such as Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, Communication Theory, Feminist Formations, and Frontiers: A Journal of Women’s Studies.Hillary A. Jones (PhD, The Pennsylvania State University) is Associate Professor in the Department of Communication at California State University, Fresno. She has co-edited a book and has published in journals including Critical Studies in Media Communication, Southern Communication Journal, Rhetoric Society Quarterly, and Communication, Culture, and Critique.

• Acknowledgements – Introduction: Paradoxes of Gendered Power Relations and Representations – Superficial Postfeminist and Postmodern Portrayals: Hegemonic and Hypermasculine Ideologies in Kill Bill, Volumes 1 & 2 – Appropriating Feminism: The Naturalization of Patriarchal Power Structures in The Hunger Games – Ass-Kicking Women and the Fight for Justice: Constructing a (White) Feminine/ist Icon in Wonder Woman – Visualizing Violent Femininity: Race, Sex and Femmes Fatales in Atomic Blonde and Proud Mary – Hybridizing and Networking Beyond Boundaries: Cyborgs and Cognispheres in the Bionic Woman and Dark Matter – Transcending Boundaries: Posthumanism and Transhumanism in Caprica and Deus Ex – Conclusion: Envisioning Feminist Futures – Index.

“Dangerous Dames skillfully coordinates critical encounters with contemporary media texts. Through sustained analysis of texts like Hunger Games, Wonder Woman, Proud Mary, Caprica, and Deus Ex, Hundley, Chevrette, and Jones astutely demonstrate the cultural and political stakes of representing powerful, female-bodied characters. Across their case studies, they investigate the politics of aesthetics, arguing that particular aesthetics shape (but do not determine) political efficacies and asserting a tempered but hopeful relationship between media representations and structural change. Throughout, the authors imply the question—What does feminism want?—to which they respond: To be understood as plural, variegated, contestatory, and dynamic. Compellingly, they mark their own analytic starting point as intersectional, and they model, for beginners and experts alike, how to select and employ specific conceptual resources like performativity, necropolitics, and posthumanism to best unpack and illuminate the case under investigation. Media fans themselves, Hundley, Chevrette, and Jones invite us to struggle with our fandom and to be accountable for the joy or pleasure we take from media consumption as they demonstrate how recent pop culture texts are riddled with cultural and political ambivalence. Dangerous Dames helps us to find the words to explain our complicated relationships with media texts that feel—that are, we hope—feminist and progressive.”—Daniel C. Brouwer (Arizona State University)