Veronica Kitchen is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Waterloo and the Balsillie School of International Affairs in Waterloo, Canada. She completed her PhD in political science at Brown University, where she was a Fulbright Scholar. Her research is a critical perspective on national security and counter-terrorism across the global/local divide. She is the author of The Globalization of NATO: Intervention, Security and Identity (Routledge, 2010) and has more recently published works on military heroism in popular romance fiction, and security at mega-events. Her current projects are about national security education and training (with Adam Molnar) and the use of simulation in teaching world politics. She is an executive member of the Canadian Network on Terrorism, Security, and Society (TSAS), and an active member of Women in International Security (Canada).

Jennifer G. Mathers is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of International Politics at Aberystwyth University, and has a D.Phil from Oxford University. She researches and teaches about gender and conflict, and Russia's security policy and domestic politics. Her publications about gender and conflict include "Women and State Militaries" in Women and Wars: Contested Histories, Uncertain Futures edited by Carol Cohn (Polity, 2012) and "Women, Society and the Military" in The Military and Society in Post-Soviet Russia which she co-edited with Steve Webber (Manchester University Press, 2005). She is the author of The Russian Nuclear Shield from Stalin to Yeltsin (2000) and her work on Russia has appeared in journals such as Europe-Asia Studies, The Journal of Strategic Studies, Civil Wars, and Contemporary Security Policy. She is currently working on a book examining the contemporary crisis in Ukraine from the perspective of feminist security studies.

Introduction 1. Heroism and the construction of political community 2. Medals and American heroic military masculinity after 9/11 3. Everyday heroics: motivating masculine protection in the private security industry 4. Rousseau, the general will, and heroism in drag: Waltz with Bashir as excessive Israeli heroism 5. Excursions into marginality: digitalised memories of militarised masculinity in Rhodesian understandings of self 6. Unsung heroism?: showbusiness and social action in Britain's military wives choir(s) 7. Bringing hyper-empowered individuals back into global affairs: the contested terrain between celebrity, hero and anti-hero status 8. Havel and Mandela: leadership and legitimacy at home and abroad 9. One of the good ones: celebrity heroism and ending sexual violence in armed conflict Conclusions: why does global politics need heroes?