Close

Evil Women: Women and Evil

In many cultures, women have been long suspected as the source of sundry human miseries, however basic to society they may be. While ideals of purity and dedication to family have been exalted and feminine beauty lauded, women have also been viewed as embodying sinister forces of evil. Mistrusted as seductive and beguiling, women are also often thought of as vengeful, manipulative and even malevolent. In grappling with our understanding of what it is to be ‘evil’, the project aims to shine a spotlight on this dark area of the human condition and explore the possible sources of the fear and resentment of women.

Women are not expected to behave in aberrant or illegal ways and we will consider the structural and systemic reasons for the heightened interest, repulsion, condemnation – and even hatred – that feminine transgression generates. Women are condemned not only for what they do but also for what they fail to do; those who harbour, lie for and couple with nefarious men are seen to have failed in their duty as gatekeepers of male morality. Where women themselves are accused of evil they are typically judged more harshly than their male counterparts, as evil acts committed by women are seen to transgress not just legal and moral boundaries but also those imposed by gender.

Against this backdrop, this project will explore the various conjunctions between evil, women and the feminine.

Activities

Conference

Evil Women: Women and Evil
3rd Global Inclusive Interdisciplinary Conference
Saturday 11th September 2021 – Sunday 12th September 2021
Online: ShockLogic Platform

 

Publications

Women, Power, and Abuse: Interdisciplinary Essays on “Evil Women” ed. Helen Gavin is under contract with Emerald Publishing.

Publications from previous meetings of Evil Hub projects which we are pleased to curate on behalf of the Inter-Disciplinary Press.

Frightful Witnessing
Frightful Witnessing: The Rhetoric and (Re)Presentation of Fear Observing the anguish of others -- voyeuristically looking at their pain through the ‘keyhole’ of the media, eavesdropping on their stories of horror, or reading accounts of terror -- can be a frightful experience; but it is also ...Book Details
Author : Beth A. Kattelman
Publish : 01/06/2014
Publisher : Inter-Disciplinary Press
Store :
Frightful Witnessing: The Rhetoric and (Re)Presentation of Fear
Forces of Evil
The Forces of Evil In this volume of essays, the authors delve into how evil forces within our culture subjugate us into shame and degradation. Within the following essays, we discover that in many ways evil and violence are incorporated into our cultural institutions as a means of conveying a grea...Book Details
Author : Anthony F. Crisafi
Publisher : Inter-Disciplinary Press
Store :
The Forces of Evil
Female of the Species
The Female of the Species: Cultural Constructions of Evil, Women From Alien Queens to prostitutes, ‘phallic’ mothers to child-murderers, evil women proliferate across cultural productions that span millennia. This collection explores the perennial question of ‘evil’ and its relationship to...Book Details
Author : Hannah Priest
Publish : 01/05/2013
Publisher : Inter-Disciplinary Press
Store :
The Female of the Species: Cultural Constructions of Evil, Women
Evil and the State: Interdisciplinary Perspectives It has been argued that situational and experiential factors provide a moral lens through which people judge the morality or otherwise of actions. The research presented within this volume takes this a step further and illustrates that individual d...Book Details
Author : Ben Livings
Publish : 01/01/2013
Publisher : Inter-Disciplinary Press
Store :
Evil and the State: Interdisciplinary Perspectives
The Changing Places and Faces of War What are the consequences of interventions? Does Islam justify and promote war? Why did the IRA declare a war on drugs? How do civilians fare in the aftermath of war? These and many other questions are discussed in this new volume on war and conflict. An interdi...Book Details
Author : Peter Mario Kreuter
Publisher : Inter-Disciplinary Press
Store :
The Changing Places and Faces of War
Beyond the Monstrous: Reading from the Cultural Imaginary Twenty-first century’s fascination with monsters in popular culture is not new. Throughout history, many of the world’s cultures have created beings they deem ‘other’ and ‘monstrous,’ beings which, many scholars agree, ultimately...Book Details
Author : Eva Gladhill
Publish : 1/06/2013
Publisher : Inter-Disciplinary Press
Store :
Beyond the Monstrous: Reading from the Cultural Imaginary
Attack on All Fronts: The Culture of Twentieth-Century War The twentieth-century was arguably the most belligerent in history, marked as it was by a culture of war - that is, values, attitudes, and so on, which support the waging of war. At the same time, this culture shifted profoundly so that n...Book Details
Author : Nanette Norris
Publish : 1/05/2014
Publisher : Inter-Disciplinary Press
Attack on All Fronts: The Culture of Twentieth-Century War
Vile Women: Female Evil in Fact, Fiction and Mythology Is the evil that women do, and the evil with which they are accused, always one and the same? How might female evil, real, assumed, or appropriated confound gendered expectation and challenge patriarchal assumptions? What strategies have women ...Book Details
Author : Anthony Patterson
Publish : 31/1/2013
Publisher : Inter-Disciplinary Press
Store :
Vile Women