Dangerous Discourses: Feminism, Gun Violence, and Civic Life

Dangerous Discourses brings together new work by feminist scholars who provide a multifaceted view of the ways contemporary media discourses inscribe particular understandings of gendered social identities, gun violence, and public policy. The chapters examine multiple media locations where discourses about guns and violence against women proliferate, including social media, mainstream news, National Rifle Association-sponsored magazines, gun research, public policy debates, popular magazines, and television drama. Utilizing theory and empirical research, this book helps us see more clearly how gender, sexuality, and other intersecting identities must be included in analysis of media discourses of guns and gendered violence. The authors discuss the role of patriarchal ideologies, and center feminist thought and concerns in order to get beyond the one-liners, sound bites, and truisms about bad guys, the Second Amendment, mental health, and personal freedom that currently dominate public debates about guns and violence. With its unique views on the ways gun violence and gender inflect each other in the United States, this book is designed for courses in media studies, women's studies, and sociology. Catherine R. Squires (Ph.D., Northwestern University) is Professor of Communication Studies at the University of Minnesota. She is the author of Dispatches from the Color Line (2007), bell hooks: An Introduction to Communication Theory (Peter Lang, 2013), and The Post-Racial Mystique (2014).