Overview

Using historical and contemporary accounts and visuals of America's gun women-in fiction and entertainment, sports shooting, armed self-defense, and the professional fields (police and military)-this highly illustrated volume looks at how armed women have positioned themselves within or against the mainstream culture of their time, while also revealing how mainstream America's perception of gun women have changed over time.

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9781592131556

Table of Contents

Reviews

Entertaining and informative. This book will have enormous popular appeal. Martha McCaughey, Appalachian State University Floyd presents a definitive picture of how American culture has portrayed women and guns, from the days of Wild West dime novels to those of pulp-fictional and Hollywood Westerns to the present...A great resource on an underappreciated sector of American culture that is knockout entertaining, to boot; the book hits the bull's-eye for history buffs and firearms enthusiasts alike. Booklist Floyd's personal gun-range experiences, the blast and recoil of her first handgun and the allure of her stainless steel Para-Ordnance P-16 [are compelling]. Publishers Weekly Cowgirls, frontier women, activists and housewives all feature in this American cultural history of gun-toting women... the historical and memoir elements of She's Got a Gun are interesting enough, but it's the images that are particularly striking... Without resorting to polemic, Floyd uses gun culture to explore the complicated ways in which the idea of threat and power, in one of its most manifest forms, has become linked to femininity in America. --Financial Times Magazine, 12 April 2008 Even if you disapprove of guns, She's Got a Gun is thought-provoking and honest. Sacramento News and Reviews Floyd's portraits of women gunowners, which range from a pre-teen girl to mature mother-daughter duos, all tell us something about not just the subjects, but ourselves... The book is interesting, lively, opinionated, passionate and strong--just like the author. Women & Guns [A]n interesting hybrid of memoir, cultural history, and--most successfully--photographic documentary. She's Got a Gun is full of amazing photographs--both archival pictures and portraits taken by Nancy Floyd. The historic images she presents in this work force us to reconsider our ideas about armed women in American culture...Equally remarkable are Floyd's own portraits of armed women...The portraits are beautifully composed and full of interesting details...the net effect of these portraits is to make readers aware of the sheer diversity of female gun owners in this country, past and present. The interview excerpts that accompany many of these portraits further complicate and enrich the visual images...Floyd's archival photo research and her efforts to connect with her lost brother through the firearms he loved, though, offer a vivid and evocative tour through the surprising world of women firearms owners. Winterthur Portfolio, Summer/Autumn 2009

Entertaining and informative. This book will have enormous popular appeal. Martha McCaughey, Appalachian State University Floyd presents a definitive picture of how American culture has portrayed women and guns, from the days of Wild West dime novels to those of pulp-fictional and Hollywood Westerns to the present...A great resource on an underappreciated sector of American culture that is knockout entertaining, to boot; the book hits the bull's-eye for history buffs and firearms enthusiasts alike. Booklist Floyd's personal gun-range experiences, the blast and recoil of her first handgun and the allure of her stainless steel Para-Ordnance P-16 [are compelling]. Publishers Weekly Cowgirls, frontier women, activists and housewives all feature in this American cultural history of gun-toting women... the historical and memoir elements of She's Got a Gun are interesting enough, but it's the images that are particularly striking... Without resorting to polemic, Floyd uses gun culture to explore the complicated ways in which the idea of threat and power, in one of its most manifest forms, has become linked to femininity in America. --Financial Times Magazine, 12 April 2008 Even if you disapprove of guns, She's Got a Gun is thought-provoking and honest. Sacramento News and Reviews Floyd's portraits of women gunowners, which range from a pre-teen girl to mature mother-daughter duos, all tell us something about not just the subjects, but ourselves... The book is interesting, lively, opinionated, passionate and strong--just like the author. Women & Guns [A]n interesting hybrid of memoir, cultural history, and--most successfully--photographic documentary. She's Got a Gun is full of amazing photographs--both archival pictures and portraits taken by Nancy Floyd. The historic images she presents in this work force us to reconsider our ideas about armed women in American culture...Equally remarkable are Floyd's own portraits of armed women...The portraits are beautifully composed and full of interesting details...the net effect of these portraits is to make readers aware of the sheer diversity of female gun owners in this country, past and present. The interview excerpts that accompany many of these portraits further complicate and enrich the visual images...Floyd's archival photo research and her efforts to connect with her lost brother through the firearms he loved, though, offer a vivid and evocative tour through the surprising world of women firearms owners. Winterthur Portfolio, Summer/Autumn 2009

Author Information

Nancy Floyd is Associate Professor of Photography, Ernest G. Welch School of Art and Design, Georgia State University.

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