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Graham-Bertolini provides the first analysis of vigilante women in contemporary American fiction. She develops a dynamic model of vigilante heroines using literary and feminist theory and applies it to important texts to broaden our understanding of how law and culture infringe upon women´s rights.

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PART I: GREAT VENGEANCE AND FURIOUS ANGER: THE FEMALE AVENGER PART II: WOMEN WARRIORS AND WOMEN WITH WEAPONS PART III: THE WOMAN WHO SNAPS, THE WOMAN WHO KILLS PART IV: THE FEMALE BANDIT/OUTLAW

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"In this wide-ranging, ambitious study of American women´s writing, Alison Graham-Bertolini offers accessibly written, clearly argued, and often perceptive readings of a diverse range of texts. Her analyses shed light on an important and underexamined subject: the figure of the vigilante woman in modern American literature. ... this is a consistently engaging contribution to scholarship that ranges across twentieth-century American literature in stimulating and memorable ways." (Ruth Maxey, Contemporary Women´s Writing, Vol. 10 (2), July, 2016)

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ALISON GRAHAM-BERTOLINI has a Ph.D. in English Literature from Louisiana State University and a Master´s degree in Liberal Arts from the University of Pennsylvania, USA. Her writing and research focus on issues in contemporary American Literature, Ethnic Literature, and Women´s Studies. She has recently published articles in the Journal of Feminist Media Studies, The Southern Quarterly, and the edited collection American Writers: Transnationalisms and Diasporas.

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