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When Aafia Siddiqui 'disappeared' from her upper-middle class life in Boston in 2003 due to accusations that she was involved in al Qaeda, competing narratives from the US government, media, and her family emerged striving to convince the American public of her guilt or innocence. These narratives were rooted in a gendered form of neo-Orientalism that informed and structured the War on Terror. The narratives, of innocent Soccer Mom, nefarious Lady al Qaeda, and mentally fragile Grey lady, sought to explain how a well-educated woman could possibly be involved with a terrorist organisation. This article uses intertextual analysis to draw parallels between Gothic literature and the Siddiqui narratives. Gothic literature's dependency upon gendered unease is particularly evident in the Siddiqui narratives, which then reveal the uncertainties within the War on Terror, particularly those related to American exceptionalism.

'Feminisation' in International Relations refers to multiple, and sometimes contradictory, concepts. Much of the time it refers to the incorporation of women into various organisations and institutions, such as women's participation in militaries or in politics. The decline of violence, or declinist, literature lists it as one of the contributing factors in the decline of violence and associates feminisation with women's social, political, and economic empowerment. Feminist theory in ir, however, conceptualises 'feminisation' in a different light. As the feminine is often devalued or deprioritised for the preferred masculine, feminisation is synonymous with devalourisation.
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Therefore, this paper will play with the dual meaning of feminisation, offering a cautionary tale for the dependency on women's empowerment in the declinist literature by asserting that it is hampered by masculinist thinking. It will do so by challenging the equation of women with gender in the declinist literature. Gender equality and/or progress cannot simply be limited to raising women's status, which implicates an understanding of gender as a binary categorisation of men/masculinity or women/femininity. Instead, gender is a spectrum that understands the multitude of gender identities, going beyond heteronormativity to lesbian, bi-, gay, trans, queer, and intersex (lbgtqi). Limiting gender to women means violences against other communities, particularly sexual minorities, is unrecognised and unaccounted for.

These essays seek to reorient the Just War tradition around its core concerns of preventing the unjust use of force by states and limiting the harm inflicted on vulnerable populations such as civilian noncombatants. Contributors argue that the tradition needs to be updated to deal with substate actors within the realm of legitimate authority, private military companies, and the questionable moral difference between the use of conventional and nuclear weapons. Additionally, as recent policy makers and scholars have tried to make the Just War criteria legalistic, they have weakened the tradition's ability to draw from and adjust to its contemporaneous setting.

Just War scholarship has adapted to contemporary crises and situations. But its adaptation has spurned debate and conversation-a method and means of pushing its thinking forward. Now the Just War tradition risks becoming marginalized. This concern may seem out of place as Just War literature is proliferating, yet this literature remains welded to traditional conceptualizations of Just War. Caron E. Gentry and Amy E. Eckert argue that the tradition needs to be updated to deal with substate actors within the realm of legitimate authority, private military companies, and the questionable moral difference between the use of conventional and nuclear weapons. Additionally, as recent policy makers and scholars have tried to make the Just War criteria legalistic, they have weakened the tradition's ability to draw from and adjust to its contemporaneous setting. The essays in The Future of Just War seek to reorient the tradition around its core concerns of preventing the unjust use of force by states and limiting the harm inflicted on vulnerable populations such as civilian noncombatants. The pursuit of these challenges involves both a reclaiming of traditional Just War principles from those who would push it toward greater permissiveness with respect to war, as well as the application of Just War principles to emerging issues, such as the growing use of robotics in war or the privatization of force. These essays share a commitment to the idea that the tradition is more about a rigorous application of Just War principles than the satisfaction of a checklist of criteria to be met before waging "just" war in the service of national interest.