Introduction
PART I Wrath: Purging, Cleansing and Appropriating the Deviant
Other
Rebecca KNUTH: Systemic Book Burning as Evil?
William A. COOK: The Destructive Power of Medieval Mythology: A
Revisionist View of the Extermination of the Cathars and
Pequots
Meg BARKER: Satanic Subcultures? A Discourse Analysis of the
Self-Perceptions of Young Goths and Pagans
Michael F. STRMISKA: The Evils of Christianization: A Pagan
Perspective on European History
PART II Sexual Imagery: Locus of Pleasure, Pain, Censorship and
Reclamation
Terrie WADDELL: The Female/Feline Morph: Myth, Media, Sex and the
Bestial
Loren GLASS: Bad Sex: Second-Wave Feminism and Pornography’s Golden
Age
Darren OLDRIDGE: “Video Abuse”: Gender, Censorship and I Spit on
Your Grave
Madelaine HRON: Naked Terror: Horrific, Aesthetic and Healing
Images of Rape
PART III Crime: Versions of Guilt, Shame and Redemption
Earl F. MARTIN Masking the Evil of Capital Punishment
Diana MEDLICOTT: Interrogating the Penal Gaze: Is the Ethical
Prison a Possibility?
Fiona PETERS: The Contraction of the Heart: Anxiety, Radical Evil
and Proximity in Patricia Highsmith’s Ripley Novels
Paul DAVIES : “I did so many bad things”: Sin and Redemption in the
Films of Abel Ferrara
Notes on Contributors
Meg Barker lectures in Psychology and Media and Cultural Studies at
University College, Worcester. She researches in the areas of
identity and the representation of gender and evil. She would like
to thank Sue Chesters, Vicky Bateman and Darren Oldridge for their
invaluable help, and the Pagans and Goths who gave so much time and
support.
William A. Cook resumed the Professor’s role in 2000 after 13 years
as Vice President for Academic Affairs at the University of La
Verne in southern California. He spent the 2000-2001 academic year
in Europe researching the Cathars and giving lectures at the
University of Gloucestershire in Cheltenham, England. He currently
teaches Advanced Writing for English Majors, American Literature,
and Literature and Mythology for the English Department. His last
book is A Time to Know, London: Routledge, 2000.
Paul Davies is an English language instructor at the University of
Passau, Germany, where he teaches courses on essay writing,
translation, and English-language film. He holds an MA from the
University of Manitoba and a Ph.D from Queen’s University. His
research interests include spirituality and religion in film, women
filmmakers, and the aesthetics of TV series.
Loren Glass is Assistant Professor of American Literature and
Cultural Studies at Towson University, USA.
Madelaine Hron is a doctoral student at the University of Michigan
- her Ph.D. is on The Translation of Pain in Immigrant Texts.
Though her work focuses mostly Czech and French literature, she is
also concerned with human rights issues, representations of
violence, and trauma and healing in literature and art.
Rebecca Knuth is an Associate Professor in the Library and
Information Science Program at the University of Hawaii. She has
recently written, Libricide: The Regime-Sponsored Destruction of
Books and Libraries in the Twentieth Century (New York: Praeger,
forthcoming).
Earl F. Martin is a Professor of Law at Texas Wesleyan University
School of Law in Fort Worth, Texas. Professor Martin holds a J.D.
from the University of Kentucky and an LL.M. from The Yale Law
School.
Diana Medlicott is Reader in Crime and Penology at Buckinghamshire
Chilterns University College, UK. Her main research areas are
penology, restorative justice, and place identity.
Darren Oldridge lectures in History, Media and Cultural Studies at
University College Worcester. He has published extensively on early
modern history, most recently as the editor of The Witchcraft
Reader London: Routledge 2002. Darren would like to thank Dr. Meg
Barker for her invaluable help with his contribution to this
book.
Fiona Peters is completing a PhD on Patricia Highsmith in the
School of English at the University of Gloucestershire. Her MA is
in Critical Theory from the University of Sussex and she was
Principal Lecturer in Critical Theory at the University of North
London. She has taught Philosophy and Literature at the
Universities of Sussex and Middlesex. At present she teaches
Critical Theory and Film Studies at the University of the West of
England, Bristol.
Michael F. Strmiska holds a Ph.D. in Religious Studies from Boston
University. He lecturers in World Religion at Miyazaki
International College, Miyazaki, Japan.
Terrie Waddell is a lecturer in Media Studies at La Trobe
University, Victoria, Australia. Her research interests and
publications focus on myth, ritual, carnival, grotesqueries,
advertising, and the representation of women in media. Originally
trained as an actor, she has worked in film, television, theatre
and radio.
"what is most welcome about this book is its relevance to the
present world climate in which the construction of ‘evil’ is still
and ever increasingly used for right-wing political ends." - in:
LIMINA, A Journal of Historical and Cultural Studies, Vol. 10
(2004)
"covers a very broad spectrum and offers some interesting analyses
on diverse topics … an interesting attempt to place the analysis of
evil within a broad approach to the study of popular culture." -
in: Screening the Past - An international, refereed, electronic
journal of visual media and history (2004)
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