This research program draws together a group of projects under the collective theme of gender, crime and security in media texts and tales. It examines a number of sites in which gendered and sexed discourses of crime and security circulate, and in the process, re-present crime and security in terms defined through neo-liberalism, militarism and post-feminism. These sites include women's magazines that adopt "true crime" narrative conventions in feature stories on women's experiences of sexual violence, security training manuals being used to train war correspondents that draw on depictions of secured forms of neo-liberal masculinity and femininity, and stories of the 1964 murder of Kitty Genovese in New York City that continue to re-code the dangers of the city in terms more clearly identified with issues of gender, sexuality and place.

Under the umbrella of this research project, Prof. Rentschler has given numerous conference presentations and invited lectures and published the following articles and journal special issue:

"States of Insecurity and the Gendered Politics of Fear." Co-editor, with Carol Stabile, of a special issue of the NWSA Journal 17:3 (2005).

"The Kitty Genovese Murder and the Problem of Communication in the City," Space & Culture (forthcoming).

"The Physiognomic Turn," International Journal of Communication 4 (2010): 1-6.

"Sarah Palin, Sexual Anomalies and Historical Analogues." Liminalities: A Journal of Performance Studies 4:3 (November 2008).

"Risky Assignments: Sexing "Security" in Hostile Environment Reporting." Feminist Media Studies 7:3 (2007), 257-279.

"Introduction: States of Insecurity and the Gendered Politics of Fear" (co-authored with Carol A. Stabile) National Women's Studies Association Journal 17:3 (2005), vii-xxv.

"Designing Fear: How Environmental Security Protects Property at the Expense of People." In Foucault, Cultural Studies and Governmentality, eds. Jack Bratich, Jeremy Packer and Cameron McCarthy. Albany: SUNY Press (2003), pp. 243-272.

"Women's Self-Defense: Physical Education for Everyday Life" Women's Studies Quarterly 26:1 (1999), 152-161.

She also co-organized the Crime, Media & Culture Symposium at McGill in May 2007. For more information on this symposium, click here.