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Women Who Kill explores several lines of inquiry: the female murderer as a figure that destabilizes order; the tension between criminal and victim; the relationship between crime and expression (or the lack thereof); and the paradox whereby a crime can be both an act of destruction and a creative assertion of agency. In doing so, the contributors assess the influence of feminist, queer and gender studies on mainstream television and cinema, notably in the genres (film noir, horror, melodrama) that have received the most critical attention from this perspective. They also analyse the politics of representation by considering these works of fiction in their contexts and addressing some of the ambiguities raised by postfeminism.The book is structured in three parts: Neo-femmes Fatales; Action Babes and Monstrous Women. Films and series examined include White Men Are Cracking Up (1994); Hit &#38; Miss (2012); Gone Girl (2014); Terminator (1984); The Walking Dead (2010­); Mad Max: Fury Road (2015); Contagion (2011) and Ex Machina(2015) among others.Table of contentsSeries Editor's Introduction, Angela Smith and Claire NallyIntroduction, Cristelle Maury and David RochePart I Neo-Femmes FatalesChapter 1 The Femme Fatale of the 1990s Erotic Thriller: A Post-feminist Killer?, Delphine LetortChapter 2 The African Femme Fatale: Re-Appropriation of a Mythical Figure in White Men Are Cracking Up (Ngozi Onwurah, 1994), Emilie HerbertChapter 3 Transwoman Who Kills: Hit &#38; Miss (Sky Atlantic, 2012), Isabelle Schmitt-PitiotChapter 4 Genre and Gender in Sin City: A Dame to Kill For (Frank Miller and Robert Rodriguez, 2014), Christophe GellyChapter 5 Textbook Femme Fatale, De-eroticised Neo-noir Heroine or Post-Feminist Woman Who Kills? Genre Trouble in Gone Girl (David Fincher, 2014), Cristelle MauryPart II Action BabesChapter 6 From Sarah Connor 2.0 to Sarah Connor 3.0: Women Who Kill in the Terminator Franchise, Marianne Kac-VergneChapter 7 Girls against Women: Contrasting Female Violence in Contemporary Young Adult Dystopias, Adrienne BoutangChapter 8 Motherhood, Domesticity and Nurturing in the Post-Apocalyptic World: Negotiating Femininity in The Walking Dead (AMC, 2010-), Marta SuarezChapter 9 An Audience Studies Approach to Tarantino's Violent Heroines in Kill Bill (2003-2004) and Death Proof (2007), Connor WintertonChapter 10 Licensed to Kill? Arming and Disarming Female Killers in Action Film and Parody in Mad Max: Fury Road (George Miller, 2015) and Spy (Paul Feig, 2015), Elizabeth MullenPart III Monstrous WomenChapter 11 The Women Who Killed Too Many: Contagion (Steven Soderbergh, 2011) and Female Virality, Julia EcheverríaChapter 12 Black Female Empowerment, Intersectionality and the Ganja character in Da Sweet Blood of Jesus (Spike Lee, 2014), Hélène CharleryChapter 13 Monstrous Feminists? Witches, Murder, and Avatars of (Post-)feminism in American Horror Story: Coven (FX, 2013-2014), Mikaël ToulzaChapter 14 Furies and Female Empowerment: The Sword and the Pen in Byzantium (Neil Jordan, 2012) and Crimson Peak (Guillermo del Toro, 2015), Carolina Abello Onofre and Christophe ChambostChapter 15 Masculine Cultures of Technology and the Robotic Female Avenger in Ex Machina (Alex Garland, 2015) , Samantha LindopChapter 16 “You're a Dangerous Girl”: Beauty and Violence in The Neon Demon (Nicolas Winding Refn, 2016), Janice LoreckCoda Evidence of Cruel Optimism: Nick Broomfield's Aileen: Life and Death of a Serial Killer (2003), Rosemary WhiteAfterword Women Who Kill after #MeToo, David Roche and Cristelle MauryContributorsIndex