The essays in Killing Women: The Visual Culture of Gender and Violence find important connections in the ways that women are portrayed in relation to violence, whether they are murder victims or killers. The book’s extensive cultural contexts acknowledge and engage with contemporary theories and practices of identity politics and debates about the ethics and politics of representation itself. Does representation produce or reproduce the conditions of violence? Is representation itself a form of violence? This book adds significant new dimensions to the characterization of gender and violence by discussing nationalism and war, feminist media, and the depiction of violence throughout society.

Annette Burfoot teaches feminist science studies and visual culture at Queen’s University, Kingston. She is the editor of The Encyclopedia of Reproductive Technologies (1999).

Susan Lord teaches in the Department of Film Studies at Queen’s University, Kingston. With Janine Marchessault, she is co-editor of Fluid Screens, Expanding Cinemas (forthcoming, 2006).

Annette Burfoot's profile page

Susan Lord is Associate Professor in the Department of Film and Media at Queen’s University.

Susan Lord's profile page

Represents a significant contribution to the study of violence and women, one that offers productive avenues of development for the emerging fields of new media studies.

Cheryl Simon, Canadian Journal of Film Studies, Volume 16, number 2, Fall 2007, 2008 April

Burfoot and Lord create a space where a critical visual vocabulary on gendered violence, gender and violence, and gender as violence are fused together. The presence of this compilation further demonstrates how the distinct paths of art, activism, and community intersect to challenge the boundaries of academic theory and practice.

Kathryn Travis, Canadian Woman Studies, Volume 27, number 1, 2010 February