over the last 75 years, superheroes have been portrayed most often as male, heterosexual, white, and able-bodied. today, a time when many of these characters are billion-dollar global commodities, there are more female superheroes, more queer superheroes, more superheroes of color, and more disabled superheroes--but not many more.

superwomen investigates how and why female superhero characters have become more numerous but are still not-at-all close to parity with their male counterparts; how and why they have become a flashpoint for struggles over gender, sexuality, race, and disability; what has changed over time and why in terms of how these characters have been written, drawn, marketed, purchased, read, and reacted to; and how and why representations of superheroes matter, particularly to historically underrepresented and stereotyped groups.

specifically, the book explores the production, representations, and receptions of prominent transmedia female superheroes from their creation to the present: wonder woman; batgirl and oracle; ms. marvel and captain marvel; buffy the vampire slayer; star wars' padm amidala, leia organa, jaina solo, and rey; and x-men's jean grey, storm, kitty pryde, rogue, and mystique. it analyzes their changing portrayals in comics, novels, television shows, and films, as well as how cultural narratives of gender have been negotiated through female superheroes by creators, consumers, and parent companies over the last several decades.

for half a century, leo bersani's texts have inspired, resisted, guided, and challenged work in the fields of literary criticism, literary theory, queer theory, cultural studies, psychoanalytic theory, and film and visual studies. concluding with an interview with bersani, this is the first book-length introduction to bersani's oeuvre.

leo bersani: living theory chronologically follows the development of bersani's thought from his engagement in the 1960s and 1970s with french and american modernist fiction and his early articulations of poststructuralist theory (derrida, deleuze, foucault, blanchot), before moving to his work on psychoanalysis and to his groundbreaking formulations of what would become queer theory in the 1990s. the final chapter proposes a dialogue between bersanian ethics/aesthetics and the recent emergence of disability theory.