Table of Contents

Introduction: Can't Live with Them, Can't Kill Them Chapter 1: Men, Women, and Alien Baby Chapter 2: Ripley Gets her Gun: Aliens and teh Reagan Era Hero Chapter 3: "The Bitch Is Back": The Iconoclastic Body in Alien Chapter 4: "Who Are You?": Alien Resurrection and the Posthuman Subject Afterword: Alien Woman Selected Bibliography Notes Index

Promotional Information

Across three decades and four films, Lt. Ellen Ripley's struggle wtih the fierce and terrible Alien and the powers that desire it traces the arc of women's struggles in America.

About the Author

C. Jason Smith is Assistant Professor of English at LaGuardia Community College-CUNY. A native of Chile, Ximena Gallardo-C. graduated with a Ph.D. in English from Louisiana State University. She lives in New York.

Reviews

"...[a] look between the lines and behind the scenes to dissect Ripley and her place in movie history." -Minnesota Daily, mndaily.com, November 3, 2004

"Doing a transtextual analysis of the films, the authors place the films firmly within the cultural landscape that produced them....Gallardo and Smith do a good job analyzing the films, especially the later ones, and setting them squarely and intelligently within their historical context." -Post Script, Winter/Spring ‘04

"...a serious contribution to academia, for it is well-researched and conscientiously documented, but its strength is that it is highly accessible to the average fan...written with clarity, with a diverse audience in mind. It is one of those texts that both scholars and fans will want to more than just read; they will want to purchase a copy so that they can reference it over and over....fans will be astounded by the amount of useful but little known factual information...it was Gallardo and Smith's enthusiasm and wry sense of humor, which informs almost every page of the book, that made me want to not only read every word, but go out and rent all four alien films again." -The Review of Horror Fiction

"Alien Woman is a truly fascinating analysis of the relationship/ conflict between the female protagonist Lt. Ellen Ripley, played by Sigourney Weaver, and the monstrous feminine Alien throughout the Alien saga...Insightful scene-by-scene analysis reveals race, gender, and class distinctions operating in each of the four Alien films....Alien Woman is a celebration of the new found light in discussion of gender, sex, and the female body in science fiction film studies. The authors display a vast awareness of the science fiction film genre and present the material in digetible chunks....the notes and bibliography provide more than ample theoretical reference for further study. --Stella Williams, Reconstruction
*Blurb from reviewer*

"By examining the films' creation and commodification of the female hero, the book illustrates how changing attitudes toward women and the female body help us understand broader societal beliefs and relationships, and provides a useful lens with which to understand woman's place in the late 20th century and early 21st century." www.aliensconnection.com
*Blurb from reviewer*