SCAF (Scholarly and Creative Activities for Faculty) Award

Research and Scholarly Activities

Distinguished Teacher

We look to our mothers to save us from injustice and distress | Opinion

Men still want to slay dragons, especially the female kind

The Color Orange? Social Justice Issues in the First Season of Orange Is the New Black

The Real “Hot Mess”: The Sexist Branding of Female Pop Stars

Unthinkable Fathering: Connecting Incest and Nuclearism

The sexualized serial murder of women by men is the subject of this provocative book. Jane Caputi argues that the sensationalized murders by men such as Jack the Ripper, Son of Sam, Hillside Strangler, and the Yorkshire Ripper represent a contemporary genre of sexually political crimes. The awful deeds function as a form of patriarchal terrorism, "disappearing" women at a rate of some four thousand annually in the United States alone.  Caputi asks us not only to name the phenomenon of sexually political murder, but to recognize sex crime in all of its various interconnecting manifestations.

Age of Sex Crime

The essays in Goddesses and Monsters recognize popular culture as a primary repository of ancient mythic energies, images, narratives, personalities, icons, and archetypes.  Together, they take on the patriarchal myth, where serial killers are heroes, where goddesses—in the form of great white sharks, femmes fatales, and aliens—are ritually slaughtered, and where pornography is the core story underlying militarism, environmental devastation, and racism.  They also point to an alternative imagination of female power that still can be found behind the cult devotion given to Princess Diana and animating all the goddesses disguised as popular monsters, queen bitches, mammies, vamps, cyborgs, and sex bombs.

Goddesses and Monsters: Women, Myth, Power and Popular Culture

Gossips, Gorgons & Crones is the first comprehensive analysis of nuclear-age culture and the accompanying return of female Powers. Based in feminist, pre-patriarchal, and Native American philosophies, this book provides a biting critique of patriarchal practices, myths, and values, including family values.

Gossips, Gorgons and Crones: The Fates of the Earth

Florida Atlantic University was founded in 1961, in Boca Raton on an 850-acre site located near the Atlantic Ocean. The campus is conveniently located halfway between Palm Beach and Fort Lauderdale and offers a broad range of academic programs, activities, and services.

The Boca Raton campus provides an exciting and supportive learning environment for students. The Student Union hosts student activities and meetings. In addition, its 2,500-seat Carole and Barry Kaye Performing Arts Auditorium enables students to enjoy performances ranging from rock bands to the Florida Philharmonic Orchestra. The campus supports two cafeterias and has an attractive array of accommodations for its residential students. The Boca Raton campus is also home to FAU's Division I Intercollegiate Athletics program and facilities. Its recreation complex includes an aquatic center, gymnasium, tennis courts, wellness center, track, and a variety of fields for club and intramural sports competition.

The five-story S.E. Wimberly Library houses a large collection of monographs, serials, and other academic resources. Computer labs, study lounges, a media center, and tutoring services also provide valuable academic support for students. The Boca Raton campus hosts art exhibits, theatre productions, and concerts in its two galleries and theatre. Visiting performers and speakers add to the artistic and intellectual vibrancy of the campus.

Florida Atlantic University

Jane Caputi is a professor of Women, Gender, Sexuality Studies at Florida Atlantic University. Her doctorate is in American Culture Studies. At FAU, Caputi has won the University Distinguished Teacher Award (2001) and was twice named University Researcher of the Year for Scholarly Activities, professor level (2005 and 2013). In 2016, the Popular Culture Association named her its “Eminent Scholar of the Year” and in 2020 the Association for the Study of Women in Mythology gave her its annual “Saga Award” for contributions to women’s history and culture. In 2013, Palm Beach County NOW (National Organization of Women gave her its annual Susan B. Anthony Feminist of the Year Award. Caputi has written four books: "The Age of Sex Crime" (1987); "Gossips, Gorgons and Crones: The Fates of the Earth" (1993); "Goddesses and Monsters: Women, Myth, Power and Popular Culture" (2004); and "Call Your “Mutha’” A Deliberately Dirty-Minded Manifesto for the Earth Mother in the Anthropocene" (2020). This last book is in a series on Heretical Thought and was published by Oxford University Press. Caputi also has made two educational documentaries: "The Pornography of Everyday Life" (2006), distributed by Berkeley Media; and "Feed the Green: Feminist Voices for the Earth" (2016), distributed by Women Make Movies. She also guest curated three exhibits on the presidential campaigns for the Schmidt Galleries at FAU: “Political Circus 2008;” “Political Sideshow 2016;" and “Political Pandemonium 2020.” These focused on popular artifacts (T-shirts, bumper stickers, buttons, etc.).

Feminism

Gender and Violence

Contemporary American Cultural Studies

Popular Culture

Ecofeminism

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Palm Beach County women reveal stories, shame of unwanted groping

Girl powder: A cultural history of love’s baby soft

Professor

Jane Caputi: Call your "mutha"

NatureCulture (Nature-culture.net) celebrates Mother (Earth) Day with readings from poets Cheryl Savageau, Dina Stander, Susan Glass, and Kristen Leigh, and author Jane Caputi. Special guest orator Sarah Pirtle reads Julia Ward Howe's Mother's Day Proclamation for Peace.

Mother (Earth) Day Reading for Peace

Feed the Green: Feminist Voices for the Earth
A film by Jane Caputi, Produced by Susan Rosenkranz

US, 2015, 37 minutes, Color, DVD 

FEED THE GREEN: FEMINIST VOICES FOR THE EARTH challenges the cultural imagination surrounding the destruction of the environment and its impact on femicide and genocide. This informative documentary, by Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies professor and scholar Jane Caputi, highlights an active global resistance movement and an alternative imagery communicating resistant green consciousness.

FEED THE GREEN features a variety of feminist thinkers, including ecological and social justice advocates Vandana Shiva, Starhawk and Andrea Smith, ecosexual activists Annie Sprinkle and Beth Stephens; ecofeminist theorist and disability rights activist Ynestra King, poet Camille Dungy, scholars and bloggers Janell Hobson and Jill Schneiderman and grass roots activist La Loba Loca. Their voices are powerfully juxtaposed with images from popular culture, including advertising, myth, art, and the news, pointing to the ways that an environmentally destructive worldview is embedded in popular discourses, both contemporary and historical.

For more information and to purchase the film visit: http://bit.ly/21E8r15

Media Inquiry