Women as criminals

You are going to look across a range of media at the idea of the woman as a criminal and how it has developed. You'll use some factual media (eg Shannon Matthews' mother) and some fictional (eg Bad Girls). For primary research you'll analyse these representations to see if the fact of being female inflects the representations (slants them or colours them) in any particular way. Are women criminals protrayed as "badder" than men for doing the same crimes...

For promary research take some of these representations and explore them with a group of women, in some way (we'll have to define this more clearly).

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2294/is_/ai_77384285

http://www.albany.edu/scj/jcjpc/vol14is1/britto.pdf

Your first ideas

Crime and the Media

Representations of criminality in the popular media. You are interested in how criminals are portrayed in over-simplified, "monster" terms and how the media do not attempt to engage in a real exploration of why crimes happen.

Great idea. Begin by collecting media materials which contain descriptions of killers, or violent criminals. The newpapers are the obvious place to start. If you can follow the development of one story that would be good.

Begin by reading the chaptes on tv representations of cops and criminals that I will give you. They focus on fiction but do include discussion of the constructions of criminality, so are useful for you. And, of course, all media is fictional for a certain perspective...

Sean