Engaging the Woman Fantastic in Contemporary American Media Culture (Nov. 1, 2013 / Jan. 30, 2014)
The past thirty years have offered a growing and changing body of scholarship on images of fantastic women in American popular culture. Collections from Marleen Barr's Future Females (1981) and Future Females: The Next Generation (2000) to Elyce Rae Helford's Fantasy Girls: Gender and the New Universe of Science Fiction and Fantasy Television (2000) and Sherrie Inness's Action Chicks: New Images of Tough Women in Popular Culture (2004) have offered multifaceted commentary on ways in which contemporary media culture posits and positions "empowered" women in speculative fictions.