As portrayals of heroic women gain ground in film, television, and other media, their depictions are breaking free of females as versions of male heroes or simple stereotypes of acutely weak or overly strong women. Although heroines continue to represent the traditional roles of mothers, goddesses, warriors, whores, witches, and priestesses, these women are no longer just damsels in distress or violent warriors. In Heroines of Film and Television: Portrayals in Popular Culture, award-winning authors from a variety of disciplines examine the changing roles of heroic women across time. In this volume, editors Norma Jones, Maja Bajac-Carter, and Bob Batchelor have assembled a collection of essays that broaden our understanding of how heroines are portrayed across media, offering readers new ways to understand, perceive, and think about women. Contributors bring fresh readings to popular films and television shows such as The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Kill Bill, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Weeds, Mad Men, and Star Trek. The representations and interpretations of these heroines are important reflections of popular culture that simultaneously empower and constrain real life women. These essays help readers gain a more complete understanding of female heroes, especially as related to race, gender, power, and culture. A companion volume to Heroines of Comic Books and Literature, this collection will appeal to academics and broader audiences that are interested in women in popular culture.

As portrayals of heroic women gain ground in film, television, and other media, their depictions are breaking free of females as versions of male heroes or simple stereotypes of acutely weak or overly strong women. Although heroines continue to represent the traditional roles of mothers, goddesses, warriors, whores, witches, and priestesses, these women are no longer just damsels in distress or violent warriors. In Heroines of Film and Television: Portrayals in Popular Culture, award-winning authors from a variety of disciplines examine the changing roles of heroic women across time. In this volume, editors Norma Jones, Maja Bajac-Carter, and Bob Batchelor have assembled a collection of essays that broaden our understanding of how heroines are portrayed across media, offering readers new ways to understand, perceive, and think about women. Contributors bring fresh readings to popular films and television shows such as The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Kill Bill, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Weeds, Mad Men, and Star Trek. The representations and interpretations of these heroines are important reflections of popular culture that simultaneously empower and constrain real life women. These essays help readers gain a more complete understanding of female heroes, especially as related to race, gender, power, and culture. A companion volume to Heroines of Comic Books and Literature, this collection will appeal to academics and broader audiences that are interested in women in popular culture.

Few could have predicted the enduring affection inspired by Joss Whedon's television series, "Buffy the Vampire Slayer." With its origins in a script Whedon wrote for a 1992 feature film of the same name, the series far outpaced its source material, gathering a devoted audience that remains loyal to the show more than a decade after it left the airwaves. Heralded for its use of smart, funny, and emotionally resonant narrative; subversive and feminist characterizations; and unique approaches to television as an art form, the show quickly developed its own unique fan community, who built on existing narratives through fan fiction, media manipulation, and performance.
"Fan Phenomena: Buffy the Vampire Slayer" explores how this continued devotion is internalized, celebrated, and critiqued. Featuring interviews with culture makers, academics, and creators of participatory fandom, the essays here are a window into the more personal and communal aspects of the fan experience. Essays from critical thinkers and scholars address how Buffy inspires the creation of, among other enduring artifacts of fandom, fan fiction, crafting, performance, cosplay, and sing-alongs.
As an accessible yet vigorous examination of a beloved character and her world, "Fan Phenomena: Buffy the Vampire Slayer" provokes a larger conversation about the relationship between cult properties and fandom, and how their interplay permeates the cultural consciousness, in effect contributing to culture through new narrative, academia, language, and political activism.

From "Wonder Woman" to Buffy Summers, Emma Peel to Sydney Bristow, "Charlie's Angels" to "The Powerpuff Girls", Superwomen are more than just love interests or sidekicks who stand by their Supermen. In her new book, Stuller shows how the female hero in modern mythology has broken through the boy's club barrier of tradition and reveals the pivotal role of high-heeled crime fighters in popular culture.Featuring spies and sexuality, daddy's girls and super-mothers, this is a comprehensive, engaging and thought-provoking guide to female detectives, meta-humans and action heroines, as well as their creators, directors, performers, and consumers. The book also includes a glossary of modern mythic women, from Aeon to Zoe, as well as a foreword by acclaimed cultural commentator Roz Kaveney, author of "Superheroes! Capes and Crusaders in Comics and Films" (published by I.B. Tauris, April 2008).