Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction

I. Heroines on Television

Chapter 1: The Erotic Heroine and the politics of gender at work: A feminist reading of Mad Men’s Joan Harris, Suzy D’Enbeau and Patrice M. Buzzanell
Chapter 2: Burn One Down: Nancy Botwin as (Post)Feminist (Anti)Heroine, Katie Snyder
Chapter 3: Choosing Her “Fae”te: Subversive Sexuality and Lost Girl’s Re/evolutionary Female Hero, Jennifer K. Stuller

II. Heroines on Film

Chapter 4: Torture, Rape, Action Heroines and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Jeffrey A. Brown
Chapter 5: The Maternal Hero in Tarantino’s Kill Bill, Maura Grady
Chapter 6: We’ve Seen this Deadly Web Before: Repackaging Femme Fatale & Representing Superhero(in)e as Neo-noir ‘Black Widow’ in Sin City, Ryan Castillo and Katie Gibson
Chapter 7: Romance, Comedy, Conspiracy: The Paranoid Heroine in Contemporary Romantic Comedy, Pedro Ponce
Chapter 8: Conflicted Hybridity: Negotiating the Warrior Princess Archetype in Willow, Cassandra Bausman
Chapter 9: The Woman Who Fell From the Sky: Cowboys and Aliens’ Hybrid Heroine, Cynthia J. Miller

III. Diversity Concerns

Chapter 10: Her Story, Too: Final Fantasy X, Revolutionary Girl Utena, and the Feminist Hero's Journey, Catherine Bailey Kyle
Chapter 11: Bollywood Marriages: Portrayals of Matrimony in Hindi Popular Cinema, Rekha Sharma and Carol A. Savery
Chapter 12: The Enduring Woman: Race, Revenge, and Self-Determination in Chloe, Love is Calling You, Robin R. Means Coleman
Chapter 13: The Dark, Twisted Magical Girls: Shōjo Heroines in Puella Magi Madoka Magica, Lien Fan Shen

IV: Heroines across Media

Chapter 14: Women on the Quarterdeck: The Female Captain as Adventure Hero, 1994-2009, A. Bowdoin Van Riper
Chapter 15: The Girl Who Lived: Reading Harry Potter as a Sacrificial and Loving Heroine, Norma Jones
Chapter 16: “It’s About Power and It’s About Women”: Gender and the Political Economy of Superheroes in Wonder Woman and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Carolyn Cocca

Index
About the Contributors
About the Editors

About the Author

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).

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).

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).

Reviews

The diversity of authorial voices, including men and women, creates an exciting compilation of articles that challenge and redefine the definition of heroine. . . .Overall, this is a great collection of essays that should please anyone with an interest in feminism and media.
*Journal of American Culture*