On Friday nights many parents want to have a little fun together--without the kids. But "getting a sitter"--especially a dependable one--rarely seems trouble-free. Will the kids be safe with "that girl"? It's a question that discomfited parents have been asking ever since the emergence of the modern American teenage girl nearly a century ago. In Babysitter, Miriam Forman-Brunell brings critical attention to the ubiquitous, yet long-overlooked babysitter in the popular imagination and American history.

Informed by her research on the history of teenage girls' culture, Forman-Brunell analyzes the babysitter, who has embodied adults' fundamental apprehensions about girls' pursuit of autonomy and empowerment. In fact, the grievances go both ways, as girls have been distressed by unsatisfactory working conditions. In her quest to gain a fuller picture of this largely unexamined cultural phenomenon, Forman-Brunell analyzes a wealth of diverse sources, such as The Baby-sitter's Club book series, horror movies like The Hand That Rocks the Cradle, urban legends, magazines, newspapers, television shows, pornography, and more.

Forman-Brunell shows that beyond the mundane, understandable apprehensions stirred by hiring a caretaker to "mind the children" in one's own home, babysitters became lightning rods for society's larger fears about gender and generational change. In the end, experts' efforts to tame teenage girls with training courses, handbooks, and other texts failed to prevent generations from turning their backs on babysitting.

In recent decades, emerging scholarship in the field of girlhood studies has led to a particular interest in dolls as sources of documentary evidence. Deconstructing Dolls pushes the boundaries of doll studies by expanding the definition of dolls, ages of doll players, sites of play, research methods, and application of theory. By utilizing a variety of new approaches, this collected volume seeks to understand the historical and contemporary significance of dolls and girlhood play, particularly as they relate to social meanings in the lives of girls and young women across race, age, time, and culture.

Dolls are the focus of this pioneering anthology establishing Dolls Studies as an interdisciplinary field of scholarly inquiry. This work revises conventional understandings of what constitutes a doll; broadens the age range to include female adolescents, women and others; locates dolls in untraditional contexts; and utilizes new methodological practices and theoretical frameworks. Placing dolls at the center of analysis reveals how critical girls' toys are in the making - and undoing - of racial, ethnic, national, religious, sexual, class, and gender ideologies and identities. Catharine Driscoll, Robin Bernstein, Elizabeth Chin are among the dozen scholars who interrogate doll products, producers, players, and youthful performers (like Nicki Minaj). Covering eight countries and crossing three centuries, this volume reveals the potential of dolls - and girls at play - to construct and disrupt, mediate and contest, perform and rescript girlhoods.

In recent decades, emerging scholarship in the field of girlhood studies has led to a particular interest in dolls as sources of documentary evidence. Deconstructing Dolls pushes the boundaries of doll studies by expanding the definition of dolls, ages of doll players, sites of play, research methods, and application of theory. By utilizing a variety of new approaches, this collected volume seeks to understand the historical and contemporary significance of dolls and girlhood play, particularly as they relate to social meanings in the lives of girls and young women across race, age, time, and culture.

Princesses today are significant figures in girls' culture in the United States and around the world. Although the reign of girls' princess culture has generated intense debate, this anthology is the first to bring together international and interdisciplinary perspectives on the multitude of princess cultures, continuously redrawn and recast by grownups and girls from the Ancien Regime to the New Millennium. Essays critically examine the gendered, racialized, classed, and ethnic meanings of royal figures and fairytale and pop culture princesses inscribed in folk tales, movies, cartoons, video games, dolls, and imitated in play and performance. Focusing on the representation and reception of the princess, this collection sheds new light on the position of princess cultures mediating the lives, imaginations, and identities of girls from toddlers to teenagers - and beyond.

Princesses today are significant figures in girls' culture in the United States and around the world. Although the reign of girls' princess culture has generated intense debate, this anthology is the first to bring together international and interdisciplinary perspectives on the multitude of princess cultures, continuously redrawn and recast by grownups and girls from the Ancien Regime to the New Millennium. Essays critically examine the gendered, racialized, classed, and ethnic meanings of royal figures and fairytale and pop culture princesses inscribed in folk tales, movies, cartoons, video games, dolls, and imitated in play and performance. Focusing on the representation and reception of the princess, this collection sheds new light on the position of princess cultures mediating the lives, imaginations, and identities of girls from toddlers to teenagers - and beyond.

Dolls are the focus of this pioneering anthology establishing Dolls Studies as an interdisciplinary field of scholarly inquiry. This work revises conventional understandings of what constitutes a doll; broadens the age range to include female adolescents, women and others; locates dolls in untraditional contexts; and utilizes new methodological practices and theoretical frameworks. Placing dolls at the center of analysis reveals how critical girls' toys are in the making - and undoing - of racial, ethnic, national, religious, sexual, class, and gender ideologies and identities. Catharine Driscoll, Robin Bernstein, Elizabeth Chin are among the dozen scholars who interrogate doll products, producers, players, and youthful performers (like Nicki Minaj). Covering eight countries and crossing three centuries, this volume reveals the potential of dolls - and girls at play - to construct and disrupt, mediate and contest, perform and rescript girlhoods.

On Friday nights many parents want to have a little fun together-without the kids. But "getting a sitter"-especially a dependable one-rarely seems trouble-free. Will the kids be safe with "that girl"? It's a question that discomfited parents have been asking ever since the emergence of the modern American teenage girl nearly a century ago. In Babysitter, Miriam Forman-Brunell brings critical attention to the ubiquitous, yet long-overlooked babysitter in the popular imagination and American history. Informed by her research on the history of teenage girls' culture, Forman-Brunell analyzes the babysitter, who has embodied adults' fundamental apprehensions about girls' pursuit of autonomy and empowerment. In fact, the grievances go both ways, as girls have been distressed by unsatisfactory working conditions. In her quest to gain a fuller picture of this largely unexamined cultural phenomenon, Forman-Brunell analyzes a wealth of diverse sources, such as The Baby-sitter's Club book series, horror movies like The Hand That Rocks the Cradle, urban legends, magazines, newspapers, television shows, pornography, and more. Forman-Brunell shows that beyond the mundane, understandable apprehensions stirred by hiring a caretaker to "mind the children" in one's own home, babysitters became lightning rods for society's larger fears about gender and generational change. In the end, experts' efforts to tame teenage girls with training courses, handbooks, and other texts failed to prevent generations from turning their backs on babysitting.

Girlhood, interdisciplinary and global in source, scope, and methodology, examines the centrality of girlhood in shaping women's lives. Scholars study how age and gender, along with a multitude of other identities, work together to influence the historical experience. Spanning a broad time frame from 1750 to the present, essays illuminate the various continuities and differences in girls' lives across culture and region girls on all continents except Antarctica are represented. Case studies and essays are arranged thematically to encourage comparisons between girls' experiences in diverse locales, and to assess how girls were affected by historical developments such as colonialism, political repression, war, modernisation, shifts in labour markets, migrations, and the rise of consumer culture.