Women Who Kill

Women Who Kill explores several lines of inquiry: the female murderer as a figure that destabilizes order; the tension between criminal and victim; the relationship between crime and expression (or the lack thereof); and the paradox whereby a crime can be both an act of destruction and a creative assertion of agency. In doing so, the contributors assess the influence of feminist, queer and gender studies on mainstream television and cinema, notably in the genres (film noir, horror, melodrama) that have received the most critical attention from this perspective. They also analyse the politics of representation by considering these works of fiction in their contexts and addressing some of the ambiguities raised by postfeminism. The book is structured in three parts: Neo-femmes Fatales; Action Babes and Monstrous Women. Films and series examined include White Men Are Cracking Up (1994); Hit & Miss (2012); Gone Girl (2014); Terminator (1984); The Walking Dead (2010­); Mad Max: Fury Road (2015); Contagion (2011) and Ex Machina (2015) among others.

David Roche is Professor of Film Studies at Université Paul Valéry Montpellier 3, France and President of SERCIA. He is the author of Quentin Tarantino: Poetics and Politics of Cinematic Metafiction (2018) and Making and Remaking Horror in the 1970s and 2000s (2014), and has edited several books, including Comics and Adaptation (2018, with Benoît Mitaine and Isabelle Schmitt-Pitiot), Steven Spielberg, Hollywood Humanist & Wunderkind (2018) and Intimacy in Cinema (2014, with Isabelle Schmitt-Pitiot). Cristelle Maury is Associate Professor at Université Toulouse Jean Jaurès, France. She has published many articles on classical film noir and on the relationships between feminist film criticism and films. She has co-edited three issues of Miranda, on new forms of adaptations, on circulations and transfers in film, and on mapping gender.

Series Editor's Introduction, Angela Smith and Claire Nally Introduction, Cristelle Maury and David Roche Part I Neo-Femmes Fatales Chapter 1 The Femme Fatale of the 1990s Erotic Thriller: A Post-feminist Killer?, Delphine Letort Chapter 2 The African Femme Fatale: Re-Appropriation of a Mythical Figure in White Men Are Cracking Up (Ngozi Onwurah, 1994), Emilie Herbert Chapter 3 Transwoman Who Kills: Hit & Miss (Sky Atlantic, 2012), Isabelle Schmitt-Pitiot Chapter 4 Genre and Gender in Sin City: A Dame to Kill For (Frank Miller and Robert Rodriguez, 2014), Christophe Gelly Chapter 5 Textbook Femme Fatale, De-eroticised Neo-noir Heroine or Post-Feminist Woman Who Kills? Genre Trouble in Gone Girl (David Fincher, 2014), Cristelle Maury Part II Action Babes Chapter 6 From Sarah Connor 2.0 to Sarah Connor 3.0: Women Who Kill in the Terminator Franchise, Marianne Kac-Vergne Chapter 7 Girls against Women: Contrasting Female Violence in Contemporary Young Adult Dystopias, Adrienne Boutang Chapter 8 Motherhood, Domesticity and Nurturing in the Post-Apocalyptic World: Negotiating Femininity in The Walking Dead (AMC, 2010-), Marta Suarez Chapter 9 An Audience Studies Approach to Tarantino's Violent Heroines in Kill Bill (2003-2004) and Death Proof (2007), Connor Winterton Chapter 10 Licensed to Kill? Arming and Disarming Female Killers in Action Film and Parody in Mad Max: Fury Road (George Miller, 2015) and Spy (Paul Feig, 2015), Elizabeth Mullen Part III Monstrous Women Chapter 11 The Women Who Killed Too Many: Contagion (Steven Soderbergh, 2011) and Female Virality, Julia Echeverría Chapter 12 Black Female Empowerment, Intersectionality and the Ganja character in Da Sweet Blood of Jesus (Spike Lee, 2014), Hélène Charlery Chapter 13 Monstrous Feminists? Witches, Murder, and Avatars of (Post-)feminism in American Horror Story: Coven (FX, 2013-2014), Mikaël Toulza Chapter 14 Furies and Female Empowerment: The Sword and the Pen in Byzantium (Neil Jordan, 2012) and Crimson Peak (Guillermo del Toro, 2015), Carolina Abello Onofre and Christophe Chambost Chapter 15 Masculine Cultures of Technology and the Robotic Female Avenger in Ex Machina (Alex Garland, 2015), Samantha Lindop Chapter 16 "You're a Dangerous Girl": Beauty and Violence in The Neon Demon (Nicolas Winding Refn, 2016), Janice Loreck Chapter 17 Evidence of Cruel Optimism - Nick Broomfield's Aileen: Life and Death of a Serial Killer (2003), Rosie White Afterword Women Who Kill after #MeToo, David Roche and Cristelle Maury Contributors Index