Hero or Villain?

Abigail G. Scheg is the associate dean of faculty for the School of Business at Northcentral University. She researches, teaches, and publishes in the areas of composition, young adult literature, online pedagogy, and educational technology. She lives in Badin, Pennsylvania. Tamara Girardi is an assistant professor of English at Harrisburg Area Community College. She lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Table of Contents


Introduction (Abigail G. Scheg and Tamara Girardi)

Bad Cops and Good Inmates: Shifting Power Structures in Prison Dramas Oz and Orange Is the New Black (Stephanie Lim)

Harrison Wells and the Making of Identities: The Scientist, the Father and the Family in the Cosmic Battle of Good and Evil in The Flash

(Hannah Swamidoss)

Bad Men: The Fan Culture and Postmasculinity of Breaking Bad (Jack Clarke)

Breaking It Down: Expressing Black Selfhood and Subverting

Binaries of Good and Bad in Key & Peele (Hilarie Ashton)

Talk Bluntly and Carry a Pointy Stick: Violence and Verbal Complexity in Buffy the Vampire Slayer (Tirza I. Leader and Darcy Mullen)

“I need an antiheroine”: Female Antiheroes in American Quality

Television (Sotiris Petridis)

A Dangerous Mind: An Examination of the Effectiveness

of Walter White as Educator (Richard L. Mehrenberg)

Building (an) Empire: Queer Sacrifices in Lee Daniels’ Empire (Robert LaRue)

Merlin: Magician, Man and Manipulator in Camelot (Caroline Womack)

“This isn’t a democracy anymore”: The Walking Dead’s Rick Grimes and the ­Post-Apocalyptic Good Cop/Bad Cop (Annette Schimmelpfennig)

“The girl needs a little monster in her man”: Heroes and Villains in the Works of Joss Whedon (Don Tresca)

The Detective, the Pastor and the Thief: Backstrom’s

Negotiations of Morality (Alissa Burger)

Building and Breaking an Antihero: The Rise of Sonny Corinthos

(Jacinta Yanders)

You Can’t Go Home Again: The Multiple Heroisms of Sergeant Nicholas Brody (Lloyd Isaac Vayo)

Good Bad Boys and the Women Who Love Them: Romantic Triangulation and the Ideal of Conformist Assimilation in The Vampire Diaries and True Blood (Ana G. Gal)

Deconstructing the Dichotomy That Is House, M.D.: A Carnivalesque Look at a Good Diagnostician/Bad Guy (Gillian Collie)

About the Contributors

Index