Action Chicks

Xena, Buffy, Lara Croft. WWF, The Sopranos, Witchblade, La Femme Nikita. The women of pop culture are center stage and as tough as ever. Action Chicks is a groundbreaking collection highlighting the heroines we've grown to worship. What can they tell us about women in the Twent-first-century? What can they tell us about how popular culture depicts women? Do the characters escape traditional gender role expectations? Or do they adhere to sexual, racial, ethnic, and class stereotypes? The essays in Action Chicks provide fans with a new look at their favourite icons and their relationship to the popular media machine. A fascinating collection that's bound to stir up some excitement.

Xena, Buffy, Lara Croft. WWF, The Sopranos, Witchblade, La Femme Nikita. The women of pop culture are center stage and as tough as ever. Action Chicks is a groundbreaking collection highlighting the heroines we've grown to worship. What can they tell us about women in 2003? What can they tell us about how popular culture depicts women? Do the characters escape traditional gender role expectations? Or do they adhere to sexual, racial, ethnic, and class stereotypes? The essays in Action Chicks provide fans with a new look at their favorite icons and their relationship to the popular media machine. A fascinating collection that's bound to stir up some excitement.

George R.R. Martin's acclaimed seven-book fantasy series A Song of Ice and Fire is unique for its strong and multi-faceted female protagonists, from teen queen Daenerys, scheming Queen Cersei, child avenger Arya, knight Brienne, Red Witch Melisandre, and many more. The Game of Thrones universe challenges, exploits, yet also changes how we think of women and gender, not only in fantasy, but in Western culture in general. Divided into three sections addressing questions of adaptation from novel to television, female characters, and politics and female audience engagement within the GoT universe, the interdisciplinary and international lineup of contributors analyze gender in relation to female characters and topics such as genre, sex, violence, adaptation, as well as fan reviews. The genre of fantasy was once considered a primarily male territory with male heroes. Women of Ice and Fire shows how the GoT universe challenges, exploits, and reimagines gender and why it holds strong appeal to female readers, audiences, and online participants.

One of the first full-length academic projects on the television series Smallville, this collection of new essays explains why the WB/CW series is important to understanding contemporary popular culture. The essays are presented in four sections covering broad categories: Clark Kent's metamorphosis to Superman and the influence of his parents and the home; the role of the series' noteworthy female characters; the series' representations of the Other, explorations of identity, and the ways in which characters speak to Clark's own struggles; and audience reception of the series and its position within the Superman narrative universe.

With a special focus on education and underrepresented geographical locations, this book is an inclusive collection of theories, discourses, art, identities, and practices related to this discipline.

Sue Thornham's study explores issues in feminist filmmaking through an examination of a wide range of films by women filmmakers, ranging from the avant-garde to mainstream Hollywood, and from the 1970s to the present day, discussing directors including Sally Potter, Jane Campion, Julie Dash, Patricia Rozema and Lynne Ramsay.

The Action Plan for Australian Birds 2020 is the most comprehensive review of the status of Australia's avifauna ever attempted. The latest in a series of action plans for Australian birds that have been produced every decade since 1992, it is also the largest. The accounts in this plan have been authored by more than 300 of the most knowledgeable bird experts in the country, and feature far more detail than any of the earlier plans. This volume also includes accounts of over 60 taxa that are no longer considered threatened, mainly thanks to sustained conservation action over many decades. This extensive book covers key themes that have emerged in the last decade, including the increasing impact of climate change as a threatening process, most obviously in Queensland's tropical rainforests where many birds are being pushed up the mountains. However, the effects are also indirect, as happened in the catastrophic fires of 2019/20. Many of the newly listed birds are subspecies confined to Kangaroo Island, where fire destroyed over half the population. But there are good news stories too, especially on islands where there have been spectacular successes with predator control. Such uplifting results demonstrate that when action plans are followed by action on the ground, threatened species can indeed be recovered and threats alleviated.

What is a superhero? Everyone knows, right? And yet everyone seems to have a different answer. In this innovative collection of essays, renowned psychologist Robin Rosenberg and comics scholar Peter Coogan explore this question from a variety of viewpoints. With essays from scholars and commentaries by the writers and creators themselves, What is a Superhero? is the first volume to provide a true synthesis and reflection of the state of superheroes in our society today.