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While developing scholarship around children's horror fiction has focused on the works of contemporary writers, this essay provides a close reading of the novels of John Bellairs, a leading and early practitioner of the genre. It argues that the first three novels in his Lewis Barnevelt series may be understood as addressing some of the same anxieties related to gender and sexuality as those found in adult works of horror. Echoing changing discourses about masculinity at work in the late sixties and seventies, Bellair's novels propose a new form of manhood for young readers at the same time they continue to tie femininity to loss, lack and unspeakable desires.

As one of the most widely celebrated documentaries about female athletes to date, The Heart of the Game remains an important text to examine for the ways it represents female athletic experience and encourages audiences to consider gender issues in sport. Such an investigation is particularly apt, given how sports documentaries authenticate particular viewpoints while being understood by audiences as historical reflections of reality. Although the film is praiseworthy for exposing the cultural construction of gender as well as some ways gender ideologies hamper female athletic success, this essay argues that The Heart of the Game’s progressive agenda is ultimately undercut by its simultaneous reproduction of gender and racial ideologies that actually marginalize women and girls in sport.

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