Women Vigilantes and Outlaws in American Popular Media: Who Was That Masked Woman?

This interdisciplinary collection of essays examines how women vigilantes, social bandits, outlaws, and anti-heroines were represented in American novels, movie serials, radio dramas, films, comics, and pulp fiction, from the post-Civil War era through World War II.

Demonstrating a broad spectrum of methodological and critical approaches, the book includes essays from seasoned as well as emerging scholars. The collected essays fill a gap in present popular culture studies and intersect with outlaw studies, gender studies, feminism, historical studies, and media archaeology, along with citizenship and national identity. The volume also considers how representations of women relate to matters of class, sexuality, and ethnicity. By analyzing female outlaws, both real and imagined, this study highlights the ways that these women have become symbols of justice and social transformation in American cultural memory.

This book is an ideal resource for researchers and academics in popular culture studies, media studies, outlaw studies, comparative literature, and feminist studies, as well as historians who focus on media in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

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Women Vigilantes and Outlaws in American Popular Media: Who Was That Masked Woman?

This interdisciplinary collection of essays examines how women vigilantes, social bandits, outlaws, and anti-heroines were represented in American novels, movie serials, radio dramas, films, comics, and pulp fiction, from the post-Civil War era through World War II.

Demonstrating a broad spectrum of methodological and critical approaches, the book includes essays from seasoned as well as emerging scholars. The collected essays fill a gap in present popular culture studies and intersect with outlaw studies, gender studies, feminism, historical studies, and media archaeology, along with citizenship and national identity. The volume also considers how representations of women relate to matters of class, sexuality, and ethnicity. By analyzing female outlaws, both real and imagined, this study highlights the ways that these women have become symbols of justice and social transformation in American cultural memory.

This book is an ideal resource for researchers and academics in popular culture studies, media studies, outlaw studies, comparative literature, and feminist studies, as well as historians who focus on media in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

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Women Vigilantes and Outlaws in American Popular Media: Who Was That Masked Woman?

Women Vigilantes and Outlaws in American Popular Media: Who Was That Masked Woman?

Women Vigilantes and Outlaws in American Popular Media: Who Was That Masked Woman?

Women Vigilantes and Outlaws in American Popular Media: Who Was That Masked Woman?

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Overview

This interdisciplinary collection of essays examines how women vigilantes, social bandits, outlaws, and anti-heroines were represented in American novels, movie serials, radio dramas, films, comics, and pulp fiction, from the post-Civil War era through World War II.

Demonstrating a broad spectrum of methodological and critical approaches, the book includes essays from seasoned as well as emerging scholars. The collected essays fill a gap in present popular culture studies and intersect with outlaw studies, gender studies, feminism, historical studies, and media archaeology, along with citizenship and national identity. The volume also considers how representations of women relate to matters of class, sexuality, and ethnicity. By analyzing female outlaws, both real and imagined, this study highlights the ways that these women have become symbols of justice and social transformation in American cultural memory.

This book is an ideal resource for researchers and academics in popular culture studies, media studies, outlaw studies, comparative literature, and feminist studies, as well as historians who focus on media in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781040423790
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Publication date: 08/14/2025
Series: Outlaws in Literature, History, and Culture
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
Pages: 196
File size: 9 MB

About the Author

Gregory Bray teaches at SUNY New Paltz, USA, where he instructs classes on filmmaking and theory. His films and publications explore nostalgia and popular culture. He serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Popular Culture, and a peer-reviewer for the Broadcast Education Association. Recent work includes the film Escapism and the book chapter “She Laughs by Night” about Batman’s Harley Quinn.

Andrew J. Ball is a member of the Affiliated Faculty of the Marlboro Institute for Liberal Arts and Interdisciplinary Studies at Emerson College, USA. He specializes in American literature and culture, continental philosophy, and media studies. He is the author of The Economy of Religion in American Literature: Culture and the Politics of Redemption (2022) and the editor of The Essential Lectures of Charlotte Perkins Gilman, 1890–1894 (2024).

Table of Contents

Introduction: Who Was That Masked Woman? 1. When Outlaws Become In-Laws: Louisa May Alcott and the Lady Grifter 2. Female Outlawry on the Gilded Age American Stage: Lydia Thompson as the British Outlaw in the 1872 Burlesque Robin Hood 3. “The Case of the Peroxide Blonde”: Real Women Criminals in True-Crime Radio Programs of the 1930s, Calling All Cars and Gang Busters 4. Not Even Mentioned: Invisible Femininity and the Nation-State in Zorro’s Black Whip 5. The Debutante Vigilante: Lady Luck, an Early Model for World War Womanhood 6. Nietzsche’s Wily Women in George Stevens’ Annie Oakley (1935) vs. Superman in DC Action Comics (1938) and Warner Bros. Media 7. Crones, Dragon Ladies, and Femme Fatales of Golden Age Comics

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