2017 Berkshire Conference on the History of Women, Genders and Sexualities

June 01 - 04, 2017

This panel focuses on a variety of approaches to influence girls and young women in society’s approved gender roles. Emilie Zaslow discusses the role of labor in the stories attached to the American Girl dolls, and how this influences their audience. Keira Williams draws our attention to the matriarchal message of some twentieth-century children’s literature, including the Oz series. Amy Farrell’s paper looks at the ideology of the Girl Scout movement in the USA, focusing on the Golden Eaglet, a 1918 silent film. Stephanie Murphy looks at women’s basketball as another tool for social conditioning, in a racialized and gendered world, during the Progressive Era. Svanur Petursson looks at a later window, the postwar period in West Germany, when popular culture also dictated social and sexual mores to young women.