From sexualized selfies and hidden camera documentaries to the bouncers monitoring patrons at Australian nightclubs, the ubiquity of contemporary surveillance goes far beyond the National Security Agency’s bulk data collection or the proliferation of security cameras on every corner.

Expanding the Gaze is a collection of important new empirical and theoretical works that demonstrate the significance of the gendered dynamics of surveillance. Bringing together contributors from criminology, sociology, communication studies, and women’s studies, the eleven essays in the volume suggest that we cannot properly understand the implications of the rapid expansion of surveillance practices today without paying close attention to its gendered nature. Together, they constitute a timely interdisciplinary contribution to the development of feminist surveillance studies.

Emily van der Meulen is a professor in the Department of Criminology at Toronto Metropolitan University. She conducts research in the areas of sex work and human trafficking, prison and community-based harm reduction and gendered and transnational surveillance. She is co-editor of numerous books, including Red Light Labour: Sex Work Regulation, Agency, and Resistance (with Elya M. Durisin and Chris Bruckert), Making Surveillance States: Transnational Histories (with Robert Heynen) and Disability Injustice: Confronting Criminalization in Canada (with Kelly Fritsch and Jeffrey Monaghan).

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Robert Heynen is a sessional assistant professor in the Department of Communication Studies at York University.

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