The Bundy Archive: Genealogies of White Masculinity

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.

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.