This collection explores representations of "evil" women in history, art, and literature. When women perpetrate violence or defy cultural norms, explanations for this transgression of gender roles often rely upon culturally specific understandings of "evil." Here, an assemblage of international scholars examine this label in various texts and contexts.

Introduction: Gender and the Representation of Evil

[Lynne Fallwell and Keira V. Williams]

Section I: Narrative Foundations

1. Fifty Sisters Can't All Be Bad: The Early Modern Reception of the Legend of Albina

[Phil Robinson-Self]

2. Demanding an Explanation: Rhetorical Apologia and the Construction of Evil in Victorian Literature

[Anna McHugh]

3. Amazon, Goddess, and Valkyrie: Re-Reading the Roots of Female Sadism in Krafft-Ebing's Psychopathia Sexualis

[Elizabeth Schreiber-Byers]

Section II: True Crime

4. "Fashioned in the Image of the Devil": Murderess Maria Manning as "the Lady Macbeth of Bermondsey"

[Nicole Anae]

5. Gender and Calamity in the British Empire: The Murderous Duo of Raya and Sakina of Alexandria

[Stephanie Boyle]

6. Of Nurses and Nazis: Sister Pia and the Dachau Concentration Camp

[Lynne Fallwell]

7. Evil Women, Dead Babies: Infant Remains at Yewden Villa

[Hannah Friedman and Karen Taylor]

Section III: Women, Evil, and the Arts

8. Justifiable Homicide: The Life and Death of Carmen in Late Nineteenth-Century America

[Kristen M. Turner]

9. Woman as Perpetrator: Theatrical Representations of Lynndie England and the War on Terror

[Lindsay Thistle]

10. "Like PLO I Don't Surrender": Genealogies of Feminine "Terror" and the Evils of Orientalist Desire

[Tara Atluri]

Lynne Fallwell teaches in the Educational Psychology and Leadership Program at Texas Tech University.

Keira V. Williams is an Assistant Professor in the Honors College at Texas Tech University.