Superheroes and Masculinity: Unmasking the Gender Performance of Heroism explores how heteropatriarchal representations of gender are portrayed within superhero comics, film, and television. The contributors examine how hegemonic masculinity has been continually perpetuated and reinforced within the superhero genre and unpack concise critiques of specific superhero representations, the industry, and the fan base at large. However, Superheroes and Masculinity also argues that possibilities of resistance and change are embedded within these problematic portrayals. To this end, several chapters explore alternative portrayals of queerness within superhero representations and read the hegemonic masculinity of various characters against the grain to produce queer possibilities. Ultimately, this collection argues that the quest to unmask how gender operates within superheroes is a crucial one.

Superheroes and Masculinity: Unmasking the Gender Performance of Heroism explores how heteropatriarchal representations of gender are portrayed within superhero comics, film, and television. The contributors examine how hegemonic masculinity has been continually perpetuated and reinforced within the superhero genre and unpack concise critiques of specific superhero representations, the industry, and the fan base at large. However, Superheroes and Masculinity also argues that possibilities of resistance and change are embedded within these problematic portrayals. To this end, several chapters explore alternative portrayals of queerness within superhero representations and read the hegemonic masculinity of various characters against the grain to produce queer possibilities. Ultimately, this collection argues that the quest to unmask how gender operates within superheroes is a crucial one.

Superheroes and Critical Animal Studies explores and puts into dialogue two growing field of studies, comic studies and critical animal studies. The book's aim is to create a form of praxis that people can use to actualize many of the values superheroes strive to protect. To this end, contributor chapters are divided into sections on the foundation of superhero representation and how to teach it, criticisms of particular superheroes and how they fall short of truly protecting the planet, and interpretations of specific characters that can be read to produce a positive orientation to the nonhuman world and craft strategies to promote liberation in the real world. Altogether, the book produces a form of scholarship on the media that is both intersectional in scope and tailored to have an impact on the reader beyond theorizing superheroes for theorization's sake.

The Intersectionality of Critical Animal, Disability, and Environmental Studies: Toward Eco-ability, Justice, and Liberation is an interdisciplinary collection of theoretical writings on the intersectional liberation of nonhuman animals, the environment, and those with disabilities. As animal consumption raises health concerns and global warming causes massive environmental destruction, this book interweaves these issues and more. This important cutting-edge book lends to the rapidly growing movement of eco-ability, a scholarly field and activist movement influenced by environmental studies, disability studies, and critical animal studies, similar to other intersectional fields and movements such as eco-feminism, environmental justice, food justice, and decolonization. Contributors to this book are in the fields of education, philosophy, sociology, criminology, rhetoric, theology, anthropology, and English. If you are interested in social justice, inclusion, environmental protection, disability rights, and animal advocacy this is a must read book.

Screening the Nonhuman draws connections between how animals represented on screen translate into reality. In doing so, the book demonstrates that consuming media is not a neutral act but rather a political one. The images humans consume have real world consequences for how animals are treated as actors, as pets, and in nature. The contributors propose that altering the representations of animals can change the way humans relate to non/humans. Our hope is for humans to generate more ethical relationships with non/humans, ultimately mediating reality both in terms of fiction and non-fiction. To achieve this end, film, television, advertisements, and social media are analyzed through an intersectional lens. But the book doesn't stop here. Each author creates counter-representational strategies that promise to unweave the assumptions that have led to the mistreatment of humans and non/humans alike.

With the ever-increasing amount of media children are consuming, it has become important for parents to learn how to help them navigate this consumption productively. All too often, the only approach to screen time by parents is a question of limiting how much and what kind. Instead, if parents and educators can adopt a more nuanced relationship to media and education, adults and children can come together in order to engage with and deconstruct the messages that are embedded in popular culture. This enables children to become more informed citizens while also enabling parents to understand the issues that their kids are going through in new ways. This collection seeks to do just that by providing a series of essays on different strategies to engage children with varying topics and programming to ensure that media consumption is an active process that promotes social and political awareness instead of apathetic entertainment. Specific examples touched on in this book include environmental destruction, animal rights, colonialism, race, gender, scientific or political neutrality, teamwork and inclusion, imagination, self-worth, and activism. Figuring out ways to navigate these issues with children is essential for creating a better world and altering the media landscape of tomorrow.

Screening the Nonhuman draws connections between how animals represented on screen translate into reality. In doing so, the book demonstrates that consuming media is not a neutral act but rather a political one. The images humans consume have real world consequences for how animals are treated as actors, as pets, and in nature. The contributors propose that altering the representations of animals can change the way humans relate to non/humans. Our hope is for humans to generate more ethical relationships with non/humans, ultimately mediating reality both in terms of fiction and non-fiction. To achieve this end, film, television, advertisements, and social media are analyzed through an intersectional lens. But the book doesn't stop here. Each author creates counter-representational strategies that promise to unweave the assumptions that have led to the mistreatment of humans and non/humans alike.

As a mainstay of modern life, the media industry disseminates information about disability on a global scale. However, media outlets do not always contribute accurate and positive depictions of disability in print and on the screen. Since previous representations of disability have been incomplete, misguided, and unimaginative, our text encourages scholars and allies to refashion media so that it disrupts the status-quo and lends itself toward a more liberatory politics. Images from the media such as film, television, and social media are assessed using critical disabilities studies, media studies, cultural studies, and other interdisciplinary fields. Many of our authors suggest that media itself is a powerful force that can counter the stigma and misrepresentation that oppresses people with disabilities and perpetuates discrimination. Contributors explore new perspectives on disability including analyses of people with disabilities as producers, consumers, and product of media. Moreover, disability is expanded on through disability identity, culture, and intersections with other disciplines such as critical race theory, gender studies, and the other such viewpoints.