Local Violence, Global Media: Feminist Analyses of Gendered Representations

While there exists a wide range of material covering violence against women, very little scholarly attention has been paid to international media treatments of gendered violence. This volume addresses the gap by providing a broad overview of contemporary representations of gendered violence, enabling comparison and contrast in forms of violence and constructions of gender across a wide range of political and geographic contexts. From nonfictional accounts of the mass rapes during the Rwandan genocide to the sexual objectification of women in Serbian media and depictions of prostitute murders in the Chinese media, this book provides an overview of media representations of gendered violence around the globe. In addition to documenting specific challenges and shortcomings of mainstream representations, chapters present insight into the various forms of resistance and hope that exist in each particular area, and analytical essays open up new lines of inquiry by offering an assessment of the uneven changes that feminist activism has enabled around the world. Suitable for students and scholars in women's studies, gender studies, media, sociology, and education, Local Violence, Global Media can be used as a supplementary text in courses on media violence, sociology of media, gendered violence in media, and international perspectives on women's studies.

The Editors: Lisa M. Cuklanz is Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Communication at Boston College. She is author of Rape on Trial: How the Mass Media Construct Legal Reform and Social Change (1996) and Rape on Prime Time: Television, Masculinity, and Sexual Violence (2000) as well as numerous articles published in journals including Women’s Studies in Communication, Critical Studies in Media Communication, and Communication Quarterly.
Sujata Moorti is Professor and Chair of the Program in Women’s and Gender Studies at Middlebury College. She is author of The Color of Rape (2002) and co-editor of Global Bollywood (2008). She has written numerous articles on gender and representation published in journals including Critical Studies in Media Communication; Media, Culture and Society, and International Journal of Cultural Studies.