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Adolescent Girlhood and Literary Culture at the Fin de Siècle
This book examines the construction of adolescent girlhood across a range of genres in the closing decades of the nineteenth century. It argues that there was a preoccupation with defining, characterising and naming adolescent girlhood at the fin de siècle. These ‘daughters of today’, ‘juvenile spinsters’ and ‘modern girls’, as the press variously termed them, occupying a borderland between childhood and womanhood, were seen to be inextricably connected to late nineteenth-century modernity: they were the products of changes taking place in education and employment and of the challenge to traditional conceptions of femininity presented by the Woman Question. The author argues that the shifting nature of the modern adolescent girl made her a malleable cultural figure, and a meeting point for many of the prevalent debates associated with fin-de-siècle society. By juxtaposing diverse material, from children’s books and girls’ magazines to New Woman novels and psychological studies, the author contextualises adolescent girlhood as a distinct but complex cultural category at the end of the nineteenth century.
Protestant Children, Missions and Education in the British World
At Christmas 1936, Presbyterian children in New Zealand raised over £400 for an x-ray machine in a south Chinese missionary hospital. From the early 1800s, thousands of children in the British world had engaged in similar activities, raising significant amounts of money to support missionary projects world-wide. But was money the most important thing? Hugh Morrison argues that children’s education was a more important motive and outcome. This is the first book-length attempt to bring together evidence from across a range of British contexts. In particular it focuses on children’s literature, the impact of imperialism and nationalism, and the role of emotions.
Rethinking Childhood in Modern Chinese History
At the cutting edge of the growing field of the history of childhood, this book shows how placing children at the centre of historical analysis enables the past to be viewed in new ways. Demonstrating that changes in the way Chinese children were viewed and cared for emerged in the context of an international shift towards child-centred education, the book places Chinese childhood in a global context. It discusses how the state and the family interacted through policy, education, media and regime change, and highlights the centrality of science and technology to twentieth-century Chinese approaches to childhood. In addition, by seeking out the voices of children themselves, the book presents valuable testimony of the world viewed through young eyes. As a study of how class, gender and age affected both representations of children and childhood and children’s real-life experiences, this book will be a valuable resource for students and scholars of Chinese studies, modern Chinese history and Childhood studies.
Philanthropy in Children's Periodicals, 1840-1930
[headline] Uncovers the role of children's periodicals in the development of charitable ideals for children between 1840-1930 Drawing on a wealth of material from children's periodicals from the Victorian era to the early twentieth century, Kristine Moruzi examines how the concept of the charitable child has been defined through the press. Charitable ideals became increasingly prevalent at a time of burgeoning social inequities and cultural change, shaping expectations that children were capable of and responsible for charitable giving. While the child as the object of charity has received considerable attention, less focus has been paid to how and why children have been encouraged to help o...
Violent Child-Animal Encounters in European Literatures
Child-animal encounters are omnipresent in literature, but the fact that these interactions are sometimes marked by violence remains rather underrepresented in literary studies. Thus, this volume examines the complex interplay of childhood, animality and violence in European literatures. The contributors show that animal-child conflicts are often representative of larger issues such as social and intergenerational inequalities, deeply embedded in broader ideological and social frameworks: whether read through the lens of colonialism, capitalism or communism these encounters negotiate fundamental questions about hierarchy, dominance, and agency.
Girls' Media in the Women's Liberation Era
Girls’ Media in the Women’s Liberation Era is a critical analysis and cultural history of popular girls’ media narratives produced in the U.S. between 1968 and 1980—the era of the second-wave feminist movement—and girls’ responses to those narratives. Grounded in exhaustive archival research and close analysis of such hits as The Brady Bunch and Family, the book highlights how mainstream media negotiated feminist themes and how liberation-era girls “talked back”—especially through letters, opinion essays, interviews, and diaries—on a range of media narratives and feminist issues, thus demonstrating their crucial involvement in the women’s movement and its wider political struggle. Girls’ Media in the Women’s Liberation Era is a key text for both students and researchers in women’s and gender studies, media studies, children’s media, American studies, cultural studies, and sociology.
Alienation and Resistance
This collection draws together recent work by new and emerging scholars which examines the representation of alienation and resistance in texts and images, both modern and traditional. The essays collected here incorporate both “high” and “low” culture, covering a wide range of disciplines from traditional literary sources to the more modern mediums of film and comic. Informing each of the contributions is one overriding question: what are the roles, forms, and conditions of alienation and resistance in our culture and its diverse media? The contributors to this collection find examples of both alienation and resistance everywhere, from sixteenth century drama to contemporary fiction, from American comics to Eastern European cinema, from representations of the body to the site of the body itself. In seeking out these representations of alienation and resistance, the essays begin also to probe the limits and limitations of such terms. As such, the collection as a whole offers both a broad overview of the field of play as it stands today and makes tentative suggestions as to potential paths of future inquiry.
Construction Toys and Modern European Culture
This innovative take on construction toys explores the development and use of building-inspired playthings between 1830 and 1940 as they became the educational toys par excellence for industrialised and industrialising societies in Europe and elsewhere. Playful and instructive at the same time, and sitting at the intersection of leisure, learning, and technology, construction toys exemplified directed, purposeful play. Both commercially oriented and avant-garde producers attempted to shape children through these objects by instilling a range of skills, particularly patience, discipline, and a sense of order. By acquiring and employing such toys for their children, middle-class families attem...
Canada 1919
With compelling insight, Canada 1919 examines the year following the Great War, as the survivors attempted to right the country and chart a path into the future. Veterans returned home full of both sorrow and pride in their accomplishments, wondering what would they do and how they would fit in with their families. The military stumbled through massive demobilization. The government struggled to hang on to power. And a new Canadian nationalism was forged. This book offers a fresh perspective on the concerns of the time: the treatment of veterans, including nurses and Indigenous soldiers; the place of children; the influenza pandemic; the rising farm lobby; the role of labour; Canada’s international standing; and commemoration of the fallen. Canada 1919 exposes the ways in which war shaped and changed Canada – and the ways it did not.
Constructing Girlhood through the Periodical Press, 1850–1915
Focusing on six popular British girls' periodicals, Kristine Moruzi explores the debate about the shifting nature of Victorian girlhood between 1850 and 1915. During an era of significant political, social, and economic change, girls' periodicals demonstrate the difficulties of fashioning a coherent, consistent model of girlhood. The mixed-genre format of these magazines, Moruzi suggests, allowed inconsistencies and tensions between competing feminine ideals to exist within the same publication. Adopting a case study approach, Moruzi shows that the Monthly Packet, the Girl of the Period Miscellany, the Girl's Own Paper, Atalanta, the Young Woman, and the Girl's Realm each attempted to define...
