Secret Agents: Popular Icons Beyond James Bond

Why does the secret agent never seem to die? Why, in fact, has the secret agent not only survived the Cold War - which critics and pundits surmised would be the death of James Bond and of the genre more generally - but grown in popularity? Secret Agents attempts to answer these questions as it investigates the political and cultural ramifications of the continued popularity and increasing diversity of the secret agent across television, film, and popular culture. The volume opens with a foreword by Tony Bennett, and proceeds to investigate programs, figures, and films such as Alias, Austin Powers, Spy Kids, the new Bond Girl, Flint, Mission Impossible, Jason Bourne, and concludes with an afterword by Toby Miller. Chapters throughout question what it means for this popular icon to have far wider currency and meaning than merely that of James Bond as the white male savior of capital and democracy.

The Editor: Jeremy Packer is Associate Professor of Communication and Director of the Communication, Rhetoric, and Digital Media Ph.D. program at North Carolina State University. He researches issues related to mobility, communication technologies, culture, and the politics of safety and security. His previous books are Mobility Without Mayhem: Safety, Cars, and Citizenship (2008), Thinking With James Carey: Essays on Communications, Transportation, History (co-edited with Craig Robertson, Peter Lang, 2006), and Foucault, Cultural Studies, and Governmentality (co-edited with Jack Bratich and Cameron McCarthy, 2003).