Tag: girlhood studies

Solving the Mystery of Nancy Drew

The following is a guest blog post written by Michael G. Cornelius, author of the article Sexuality, Interruption, and Nancy Drew, which appeared in Volume 8, Number 2 of the journal Girlhood Studies.

 

It’s admittedly an odd thing, to be a Nancy Drew scholar.
 
Strictly speaking, “Nancy Drew Scholar” is not the official occupation listed on my tax forms. And when strangers ask me what I do for a living—whenever such casual conversations between strangers bubble up, such as on an airplane—I never reply “Nancy Drew scholar.” I usually say “English teacher” or “professor” or even “medievalist” (which raises more than a few eyebrows on its own, trust me.) And, at the risk of sounding like an actor who worries about typecasting, I’m more than a Nancy Drew scholar. I write on a wide variety of subject matter: sword-and-sandal movies; science fiction; sexuality in the premodern and early modern eras—a quick perusal of my CV would reveal books and articles with words like “Chaucer” and “Shakespeare” and “Gawain” in the titles (there’s also one that includes the word “Farts,” but that’s a subject of a whole different blog post.)
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Researching Girls of Color

The following is a guest blog post written by Sharon Lamb, co-author of the article Pride and Sexiness: Girls of Color Discuss Race, Body Image, and Sexualization, which appeared in Volume 8, Number 2 of the journal Girlhood Studies.

 

 

Way back when, my/our research group was interested in the issue of sexualization of girls and how girls conceived of it. We wanted to dive into the dilemma and critique of the APA Sexualization of Girls Task Force Report that suggested the co-authors, myself included, represented girls as dupes of the media, rather than shapers of it who make their own meaning from it. Typically, I have found, White middle class feminist students have been interested in the idea of sexualization although that may have been a result of my being a White middle class feminist (in their eyes, that is, — I wasn’t always middle class!). But that year, in the research group, a woman of color joined us and she was also doing a Practicum at a charter school (with 7th-12th grade students) that was quite diverse, more diverse that we at the time realized. She offered to make the connection for us and so we set about thinking through the questions we wanted to ask girls themselves about what is sexy and what is sexualization, and how race and ethnicity might intersect with their ideas.

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Mentoring: Doing and Theorising

Girlhood StudiesThe below is a special guest post written by Ann Smith, the Managing Editor of Girlhood Studies – An Interdisciplinary Journal.

 

While we work with many leading scholars and well-established authors, we also encourage new and inexperienced writers to contribute to Girlhood Studies so, as the managing editor, I see my task as necessarily including a great deal of mentoring. But, how does one talk about mentorship without sounding patronising? Being a mentor in this context is not difficult, if very time-consuming; I have never yet encountered any opposition from an inexperienced contributor to my guidance and suggestions and I often preface encouraging comments about improvements and progress in the development of a ms that is gradually becoming suitable for publication with a statement like: “I don’t mean to sound patronising but I do want to tell you how much better this version is” or something similar. Without exception so far, these authors voice gratitude and are willing to do whatever it takes. But being a mentor and talking about this process are two very different things.

When I say that I have mentored authors whose command of English indicates that this is their second (if not third) language I am already sounding like a colonial authority! There are many Englishes spoken around the world but I have to insist on a level of what might be called white Western English. When I describe an author’s command of academic language as poor or lacking I am insisting that she or he write in a way that is acceptable to a very tiny minority of readers. I find that hard to justify here although I know that what I am doing is the right thing to do in this particular context of editing an academic journal.

It is much easier to use an unoffending agentless passive voice construction to suggest to an author that a thesis put forward, say, in her abstract is being contradicted later in the article than it is to say here—in the brutally declarative active voice—that some authors appear to lack logic and seem to be unable to argue conclusively, true as this might be. And, in the work of new and inexperienced authors, it is easier to correct the misplaced modifiers (of which there have been very many over the years) and fix the incorrect punctuation (that seems to me to be endemic) than it is to say here that some writers have a poor grasp of basic English grammar.

But then, luckily, I am not often called upon to articulate why this mentoring is necessary; I just do it and the best part of it falls outside of any theorising—the recognition that Girlhood Studies has functioned as a launching pad for authors who are on their way to becoming the next generation of leading scholars, and that I have played a role in this process.

by Ann Smith, Managing Editor of Girlhood Studies

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Is There Such Thing as “Low-Brow?” Taking Pop Culture Seriously

by Martha Hoffman, Journals Editorial and Production Manager

 

Maybe it’s my age, but sometimes I feel like two different people inhabit my mind: there’s the person that was obsessed with sociology in college, reading Critical Race Theory for fun and over-scheduling classes I didn’t need because I was genuinely excited at the thought of learning and figuring out what I was most passionate about. This is the half of me that feels most at home at Berghahn, the intellectually curious and studious parts of me thriving as I help in the production of academic and scholarly journals.

But there’s also the other part of me: the girl that loves reality television, blockbuster movies and popular music. I can spend hours looking for fun dance songs, watching network comedies and am willing to pay NYC movie theatre ticket prices to see a rom-com if a friend is willing to do the same.

The other day, I was working on creating an ad for a new issue of Girlhood Studies. I was looking at the last issue, and an article title caught my eye: “Some Assembly Required: Black Barbie and the Fabrication of Nicki Minaj.” The topic of Minaj has come up in my life from time to time, though it’s usually on the internet, radio or tv, and if anyone’s discussing her it’s usually not her merits or her culture significance but rather her butt, face or the fact that she can’t rap. It’s not that I think Minaj can’t rap, I’ve just noticed that the most vocal commentors of the artist are those insisting she’s not an artist to begin with. With any type of fame, knee-jerk vitriol seems to follow. Admittedly, my comments about her have often fallen into similarly shallow categories, albeit positive: I think she’s beautiful, funny and a decent rapper. However, other than those cursory observations, I don’t think I’ve ever stood back and thought about her in a larger context, whether it be from a gender-, race- or cultural standpoint.

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Girls and Dolls: A Note on Images from the Latest Issue of Girlhood Studies

One of Mandrona's dolls, made when she was 8.

Most of my work deals with text, so it was a bit of a treat when I opened up the files for the latest Girlhood Studies and found them chock full of images of dolls. This journal covers many themes related to the challenges and dangers facing girls all over the world – it’s always such a pleasure to work on but I was particularly excited to see an issue that also speaks to the creative and serious play of girlhood. Dolls, needless to say, are cultural artefacts and reflect the society that makes them as well as the girls who play with them: an American Girl doll capturing an immigrant Jewish girlhood essentially whitewashed of tenements and the memory of pogroms; nineteenth-century paper dolls embodying both moral tales and fashion plates; Barbie and her Dream House reflecting the dimensions of modern architecture. All three of these examples are mediated by commercial culture and present tensions between cultural constructs and individual play. Continue reading “Girls and Dolls: A Note on Images from the Latest Issue of Girlhood Studies” →