"The chapters in this book traverse disciplinary fields, sampling a wide range of approaches and theoretical perspectives. Most of these essays were workshopped at the "Girls, Texts, Cultures" symposium at the University of Winnipeg in 2010. This symposium was designed to generate and sustain dialogues between two groups of scholars: those focusing on texts for and about girls, and those who investigate contemporary girlhoods."--Introduction. Includes bibliographical references and index.
Contents:
Girls, texts, cultures: cross-disciplinary dialogues / Clare Bradford and Mavis Reimer -- From girlhood, girls, to girls' studies: the power of the text / Dawn H. Currie -- On secrets, lies, and fiction: girls learning the art of survival / Kerry Mallan -- Disgusting subjects: consumer-class distinction and the affective regulation of girl desire / Elizabeth Bullen -- Still centre stage? : reframing girls' culture in new generation fictions of performance / Pamela Knights -- Warrior girl and the searching tribe: indigenous girls' everyday negotiations of racialization under neocolonialism / Sandrina de Finney and Johanne Saraceno -- Girls' texts, visual culture, and shifting boundaries of knowledge in social justice research: the politics of making the invisible visible / Claudia Mitchell -- "Doing their bit": the Great War and transnationalism in girls' fiction / Kristine Moruzi -- Bollywood as a role model: dating and negotiating romance / Kabita Chakraborty -- Movable morals: eighteenth and nineteenth-century flap books and paper doll books for girls as interactive "conduct books" / Jacqueline Reid-Walsh -- Wild Australian girls? The mythology of colonial femininity in British print culture, 1885-1926 / Michelle J. Smith -- Dynamic (con)texts: close readings of girl' video gameplay / Stephanie Fisher, Jennifer Jenson, and Suzanne de Castell -- Reading smart girls: post-nerds in post-feminist popular culture / Shauna Pomerantz and Rebecca Raby.
Summary:
"This book focuses on girls and girlhoods, texts for and about girls, and the cultural contexts that shape girls' experience. It brings together scholars from girls' studies and children's literature, fields that have traditionally conducted their research separately, and the collaboration showcases the breadth and complexity of girl-related studies. Contributors from disciplines such as sociology, literature, education, and gender studies combine these disciplinary approaches in novel ways with insights from international studies, postcolonial studies, game studies, and other fields. Several of the authors engage in activist and policy-development work around girls who experience poverty and marginalization. Each essay is concerned in one way or another with the politics of girlhood as they manifest in national and cultural contexts, in the everyday practices of girls, and in textual ideologies and agendas. In contemporary Western societies girls and girlhood function to some degree as markers of cultural reproduction and change. The essays in this book proceed from the assumption that girls are active participants in the production of texts and cultural forms; they offer accounts of the diversity of girls' experience and complex significances of texts by, for, and about girls." -- Publisher's description.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.