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Full Description
Girls' Series Fiction and American Popular Culture examines the ways in which young female heroines in American series fiction have undergone dramatic changes in the past 150 years, changes which have both reflected and modeled standards of behavior for America's tweens and teen girls. Though series books are often derided for lacking in imagination and literary potency, that the majority of American girls have been exposed to girls' series in some form, whether through books, television, or other media, suggests that this genre needs to be studied further and that the development of the heroines that girls read about have created an impact that is worthy of a fresh critical lens. Thus, this collection explores how series books have influenced and shaped popular American culture and, in doing so, girls' everyday experiences from the mid nineteenth century until now. The collection interrogates the cultural work that is performed through the series genre, contemplating the messages these books relay about subjects including race, class, gender, education, family, romance, and friendship, and it examines the trajectory of girl fiction within such contexts as material culture, geopolitics, socioeconomics, and feminism.
Contents
1. "Louisa May Alcott's Theater of Time"
Marlowe Daly-Galeano, Lewis-Clark State University
2. "Queering the Katy Series: Disability, Emotion, and Imagination in the Novels of Susan Coolidge."
Eva Lupold, Rutgers University-Camden
3. "Working Girl: The Value of Girl Labor in The Five Little Peppers Book Series"
Christiane E. Farnan, Siena College
4. "'A Spectacle of Girls: L. Frank Baum, Women Reporters, and the Man Behind the Screen in Early Twentieth-Century America"
Paige Gray, University of Southern Mississippi
5. "Nancy Drew's Shadow: Trixie Belden and a Case for Imperfection"
Michael Cornelius, Wilson College
6. The Bob-Whites of the Belden-Wheeler Detective Agency: Gender, Class, and Race in the Trixie Belden series, 1948-1986"
Carolyn Cocca, State University of New York, College at Old Westbury
7. "Nancy Drew and Trixie Belden: Girl Detectives, Role Models, and Feminist Icons"
Nichole Bogarosh, Whitworth University
8. "Cherry Ames: A New Woman for the 1940s"
Linda Simon, Skidmore College
9. "From Betsy-Tacy to the Blog: Diary-Keeping, Self-narrative and Adolescent Identity in American Girls' Books"
Megan Friddle, Emory University
10. "'Girl-Sized Views' of History: Political Consciousness in the American Girl Series"
Mariko Turk, University of Florida
11. "'I Like Sports and You Like Clothes, But We Both Love Babies!: Problems of Identity, Voice, and Indoctrination in The Baby-Sitters Club Series"
Mary Bronstein, Independent Scholar
12. "Fancy Nancy: Precocious or Precious?
Lori Johnson and Lisa Laurier, Whitworth University
13. "'Beyond Cruel': Female Heroines and Third-Wave Feminism in The Vampire Academy"
Janine Darragh, University of Idaho
14. "Growing up in the 21st Century: Pretty Little Liars and their Pretty Little Devices"
Grace Halden, University of London
