Exploring the universal heroine's journey as she quests through world myth, this book includes numerous stories from cultures such as Scotland and Africa to reveal heroines who battle for safety and identity, thereby upsetting popular notions of the passive, gentle heroine.

Table of Contents Introduction Section I: New Rules Passing the Mako Mori Test: Female Agency in Men’s Science Fiction and Fantasy Cinema (Tim Posada) Blockbusters for a New Age: Sisterhood Defeats Angry Young in Black Panther, Captain Marvel, Last Jedi and Ghostbusters (Valerie Estelle Frankel) Sci-Fi/Fantasy Movies for Identity Politics in Fourth Wave Feminism (Aamir Aziz and Farwa Javed) Imperator Furiosa, Fury Broad: Gender in Mad Max: Fury Road (Martin Ricksand) Section II: Deconstruction From Traditional Slasher to Fourth Wave: Fantastical Reconversion in The Final Girls and Happy Death Day (Fernando Gabriel Pagnoni Berns, Canela Ailén Rodriguez Fontao and Mariana S. Zárate) Annihilation, HeLa and the New Weird: Destruction as ­Re-Creation (Alexis Brooks de Vita) “Hello, beasty”: Uncompromising Motherhood in Disney’s Maleficent (Melissa Wehler) Section III: Children’s Stories Katniss, the Naive Virgin: Fourth Wave Heroines Recentering ­Neoconservative Values (Paula Talero Álvarez) Contrivances of Female Empowerment and the Millennial Wave in Disney Movies (Ananya Chatterjee and Nisarga Bhattacharjee) Making Her Own Destiny: Disney’s Diverse Females (Lisann Anders) Jack Frost and the Heroine’s Journey: ­Gender-Bending Back to the Goddess in Rise of the Guardians (Patti McCarthy) Section IV: Superheroes Stings Like a Wasp: Janet van Dyne, Hope van Dyne and the Feminist Superheroine in the Ant-Man Films (Don Tresca) Riding the Waves of Feminism in Wonder Woman: A Shock Heard ’Round the World (Carol ­Zitzer-Comfort and José I. Rodríguez) Deconstructing the Wonder: Liberal Versus Conservative Thought in Patty Jenkins’s Wonder Woman (Christian Jimenez) Black Panther and Wonder Woman: A Study in Feminist Representation (Shoshana Kessock) About the Contributors Index

“an extremely useful primer of women in myths and legends....Frankel has done wonderful work in retrieving and retelling these stories”—Foundation: The International Review of Science Fiction; “Frankel’s book is so enthusiastically written, so thoroughly researched, and so articulately argued...leaves the reader anticipating each exemplary tale, and longing for further discussion”—Mythprint; “I recommend From Girl to Goddess highly. Frankel’s truly global choice of tales and her analysis of them is outstanding. It is a book to turn to for deepening one’s understanding of myths and stories about women and their underlying structures”—Mythlore; “explores the heroine’s journey and how it differs from the hero’s by examining women’s mythology from all over the world”—Livejournal.com; “gathers stories from around the world representing the heroine’s journey”—Reference & Research Book News; “ever since...my first novel, I have wanted this book”—Romance Writers of America; “Frankel draws a connection between the heroines in contemporary fantasy fiction for children and young adults to the heroines from world mythology”—Children’s Literature Association Quarterly.