Overview

Since his first arrest in 1975, Ted Bundy has been the most ubiquitous serial killer in US popular culture. He is the subject of seven feature films or miniseries, several televised documentaries and podcasts, numerous true crime books, and myriad other texts trading in the saga of a man who kidnapped, raped, and murdered at least thirty white women and girls in the Pacific Northwest, Utah, Colorado, and Florida. The Bundy Archive: Genealogies of White Masculinity is the first scholarly study to investigate the deep, unsettling allure of Bundy within the public imagination. Working at the intersection of cultural criticism, true crime, and memoir, author Bryan J. McCann argues that Bundy’s ubiquity is not a function of his depravity and strangeness, but of his familiarity and resonance. McCann considers cultural artifacts, rhetoric, and popular texts surrounding Bundy—collectively constructing what he terms ""the Bundy archive""—and demonstrates how these elements reveal public anxieties about and investments in white masculinity and gendered violence. The Bundy Archive maps the pervasive and disturbing ways that white masculinity is intertwined with sadistic violence, urging readers to confront the anxieties and societal investments that perpetuate this brutal legacy. McCann's work is a critical examination of how public culture grapples with the dark specter of white male violence, offering profound insights into the intersections of race, gender, and violence in modern America.

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9781496860774

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Reviews

""Erudite, provocative, and disturbing. McCann renarrates the conventional understandings of Bundy as a kind of perverse aberration, choosing instead to illustrate the ways Bundy is more like us than we are comfortable to admit. McCann shows how Bundy not only hid in plain sight as he committed his murders, he still hides in plain sight in cultural narratives and performances of white masculinity."" - Casey Ryan Kelly, author of Caught on Tape: White Masculinity and Obscene Enjoyment

Author Information

Bryan J. McCann is professor of rhetoric and cultural studies at Louisiana State University. He is author of The Mark of Criminality: Rhetoric, Race, and Gangsta Rap in the War-on-Crime Era, and his work has appeared in such publications as Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, Rhetoric & Public Affairs, and Women’s Studies in Communication.

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