This series publishes critical scholarship that seeks to engage and transcend the disciplinary isolationism and genre confinement that now characterize so much of contemporary research in communication studies and related fields. It focuses on studies that address the broad intersections and hybrid trajectories that define the encounters between human groups in modern institutions and societies and the way these intersections are represented in contemporary popular cultural forms of knowledge.
The Warrior Women of Television examines contemporary representations of the female action hero in three series: La Femme Nikita, Aeon Flux, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Detailed readings focus on the ways the structure and content of each series work to create specific understandings of the body that are in contrast to those of male-centered action texts. Arguing that television texts mediate larger cultural concerns, this book considers the feminist implications of the series and uses insights from critical writings on contemporary culture and the body to discuss the ways the female hero functions as a potent contemporary cultural symbol.
