They're everywhere in the academy: young, bright women mentored by older scholars, usually men, who attempt to mold them into their own masculine ideals. Janice Hocker Rushing's study of over 200 women and their life transformations is the subject of this eloquent book. Using the tropes of mythology and Jungian psychology, the author characterizes the many paths these women's academic lives take: as Muse for a faltering older scholar, as Mistress or wife, as the dutiful academic daughter. Their resistance to this power differential also takes many forms: as a Veiled Woman, silent in public but active in private, or the Siren, using her sexuality to beat the system. Ultimately, Rushing arrives at the myth of Eros and Psyche, where women's self understanding and personal development turns her erotic mentoring into an autonomous, whole, and free life, unfettered by any man. These women's stories and Rushing's literary and literate framing of their lives will ring true to many in the university.

Part human, part machine, the cyborg is the hero of an increasingly popular genre of American film and a cultural icon emblematic of an emergent postmodern mythology. Using the cyborg film as a point of departure, the authors examine how we rework Western myths and initiation rites in the face of new technologies. Through in-depth examinations of six representative films - "Jaws", "The Deer Hunter", "The Manchurian Candidate", "Blade Runner", "The Terminator", and "Terminator 2" - the authors track the narrative's thread from the hunter to his technological nemesis, demonstrating how each film represents an unfolding hunter myth. For each movie, Rushing and Frentz show how uninitiated male hunters slowly lose control over their weapons. In "Jaws", a "soft" man, dominated by technology, can re-acquire the heroic hunter qualities he needs by teaming up with a "savage" man and a "technological" man. In doing so, he can still conquer the prey. "The Manchurian Candidate" charts how technology can turn a human into a weapon; "Blade Runner" perfects the artificial human with its manufactured replicants who are "more than human"; and "The Terminator" introduces a female hunter who leads humanity in its struggle against technology.