The influence of adult fashions on those of children in the eighteenth century

Call number: LD2668 .R4 1968 H58

More than just a phase : the discursive constructions of childhood as a transitional identity

This thesis identifies the concept of transition as central to the construction of girlhood identity and examines this through three key discourses on girlhood: academic discourses, market discourses, and discourses of the self. By providing a discourse analysis of the construction of transitional girlhood identity through the lenses of the social world, consumer culture, and personal narrative, this research outlines the ways in which girls have been constructed as transitional, fluid, unfixed identities in need of surveillance, guidance and control--neither children nor adults, two identifications that encompass fixed points in the social world. A discussion of the fashion doll as a technology of gender that codes normative identity in girls' play provides an opportunity to discuss this discursive formation in the context of everyday social practices and acknowledges the ways in which these codes are negotiated in girls' interpretations and readings. While this element of identity construction is central to the ways in which girls interact in a variety of social territories, girls are able to actively engage with elements of the social world and carve out their own identities to become multidimensional, relational social subjects

Museum education and international understanding : representations of Japan at the British Museum

This study examines how 'Japan' has been represented at the British Museum, and how the\ud Japanese collection and exhibitions have contributed to the promotion of international\ud understanding as defined by UNESCO in 1974.\ud I address the research questions:\ud - How has Japan been represented at the British Museum, and how does the\ud 'Discovering Japan' exhibition fit within this context? (Part 2)\ud - What perceptions did British pupils have of Japanese culture and people, and how did these\ud change after the visit? (Part 3)\ud - What understanding (that is appreciation and interest) did these pupils have of Japanese\ud culture and people, and how did this change after the visit? (Part 3)\ud -What lessons might be learned for future exhibitions about Japan? (Part 4)\ud This study consists of four parts. Part 1 explains the research background and its\ud methodologies. Part 2 is a documentary analysis of the history of the representation of Japan in\ud the British Museum. It addresses the development of the Japanese collection, its educational\ud use, and how a hands-on exhibition - Discovering Japan - fits within this context.\ud Part 3 analyses how a travelling exhibition - Discovering Japan - promotes British pupils'\ud understanding of Japanese culture and people. I examine pupils' verbal and visual perceptions,\ud and understanding before and after exhibition exposure. Most pupils expanded their perception\ud of Japan and sustained a high appreciation of the people. However, pupils who already held\ud negative perceptions rarely changed their views.\ud Part 4 provides recommendations for the further promotion of international understanding in\ud museums. I suggest a Gdi model in planning this type of exhibition and recommend: 1) an\ud awareness that children understand displays differently from adults; 2) consultation with native\ud professionals at the exhibition planning stage; 3) surveying pupils' perception of the culture in\ud focus; and 4) developing links between museums and schools

The queer child and haut bourgeois domesticity : Berthe Morisot and Mary Cassatt.

Since the 1970s, feminist art historians have extensively treated Mary Cassatt and Berthe Morisot. In particular, focusing on class-bound womanhood and domesticity, Griselda Pollock, Linda Nochlin, and Anne Higonnet have provided compelling psychoanalytic, Marxist, and semiotic analyses, seemingly exhausting all potentials for any further historical exploration of these artists. Yet, to date, investigations into the significance of the queer (deviations from normative sociocultural codes of gender identity, sexuality, and reproduction) in the works of Cassatt and Morisot have not been conducted. In this dissertation, queer theory complements the existing scholarship that has focused on the significance of women as mothers in the oeuvres of both artists. Late nineteenth-century norms concerning masculinity, childhood innocence, and normalization were determined by rigid classificatory boundaries that ensured the existence of binary oppositions (masculine/feminine, child/adult/, human/animal, etc.) and rendered any evidence of nuance as suspect. Using primarily queer and psychoanalytic theories, this dissertation reveals the paradoxes in late nineteenth-century French and American culture that govern normativity and the strangeness with which established norms imbue behavior that comes “naturally” to the portrayed men and children. This dissertation is divided into four chapters covering queer patriarchy, childhood innocence, and normalization. Each chapter discusses the problematic nature of established dichotomies to uncover the constructedness of normativity and queerness. Chapter One examines how Cassatt and Morisot depicted the dynamics of fathers and family life amid a “crisis” of masculinity triggered by the aftermath of war, increasingly sedentary lifestyles, and the physical and psychological ramifications of the competitive corporate atmosphere. Chapter Two reveals childhood innocence as a contradiction to heteronormative expectations and explores the significance of animals and childhood sexuality in the dynamics of both constructs. Chapter Three looks at the normalization of children in terms of pedagogy, resistance to normalization, and suppression of the inner animal. Chapter Four illuminates the hidden queerness in depictions of normative play and the significance of “gender-inappropriate” playtime activities

“Goth Barbies”: A Postmodern Multiperspective Analysis of Mattel’s Monster High Media

This research examines the historical, cultural, and social context in relation to the monster characters of Mattel’s Monster High, a franchise about animated dolls that are the offspring of famous horror monsters. The animated dolls are an intersection of complex gender and racial identities that are constructed in a postmodern reality. The goal of this research is to formulate a more complex understanding of the social and cultural contexts, relationships, interactions and meanings within production, circulation, and distribution of Monster High media. The preferred reading of the Monster Highseries is postmodernism. Monster Highdisplays a multitude of postmodern elements, such as de-centering the subject, intertextuality, pastiche, transmedia storytelling, hyperreality, fragmentation, self-reflectivity, irony, and postmodern identity. Magical elements, fictional places, and colorful and talking creatures allow for young children to separate realism and make-believe. A negotiated reading of the series allows for a closer examination into the gendered and racialized identities of the monsters as well as gender roles and racial tensions within the series. Monster Highpresents the characters from a heteronormative perspective allowing the actions and storylines of the ghoulfriends to perpetuate stereotypes about binary gender roles.Incorporating monstrous versions of celebrities adds to not only the parodied function of the series, but the series functioning as a hyper-reality that references and reinforces certain aspects of popular culture that relate to young viewers. Monster High’s media content includes stereotypical elements of gender, race, and other intersecting identities, neglects contemporary depictions of Eastern cultures, veers away from societal issues, and sanitizes adult content for childhood consumption. From a postmodern perspective, young viewers can dismiss the physical attributes of the characters as exaggerated, fictional, and fanciful. However, it is harder to ignore elements of discrimination, prejudice, and gender performance within the storylines. While young audiences may not identify with the physical and nonsensical appearance of the monsters, they can relate to the behaviors, interactions, emotions, and values of the animated characters

Women Framing Hair: Serial Strategies in Contemporary Art

This thesis explores the complex and enigmatic motif of hair in the work of five contemporary women artists, Chrystl Rijkeboer, Alice Maher, Annegret Soltau, Kathy Prendergast and Ellen Gallagher, from the late 1970s to the present. The purpose of the research is to investigate why hair is such a productive and resonant site of meaning, how it is suggestive of and responds to serial strategies, and why it appears to be of particular significance to women who are artists. I explore the implications of hair as an embodied material, as well as its role as a haptic metaphor of the life cycle. I also discuss some of the divergent histories of hair as a rich marker of identity in cultural discourses of beauty, myth and femininity, and as a symbol of status and power. What might be seen as a darker, more liminal side of hair as a site of excess and body waste, and its ability to represent trauma and 'wounding', are also explored. As I argue, through its somatic connections hair can be positioned both of, and yet abjected from, the living body. Informed by a range of theoretical approaches, this research has drawn on Julia Kristeva's theorizations of the abject, Hélène Cixous's notion of écriture feminine, and a Deleuzian consideration of difference. A major concern is the different artists' strategies and negotiations with notions of seriality, which enable rich and compelling possibilities for writing the female body in imaginative and fluid ways. This, together with gender issues, identity and the body - specifically the head - and memory as a marker of biography, are key themes throughout the thesis. In combination with its historiography, the medium of hair and its simulacra in art practice are seen to have the potential to challenge and subvert conceptions of feminine identity and some of the bastions of traditional painting and sculpture

Shame, Blame and Contradictions in Protectionist Anti-Sexualisation Discourses on Girls' Dress

In the new millennium a media discourse has arisen in the Anglophone press that discusses girls' dress as 'sexualising'. 'Protectionists' have come to build a causal link between 'harms' that may befall girls and the clothing that they wear. The tone and content of these discourses has in turn been criticised by 'liberal' academia. It condemns these as further placing girls at harm through a disproportionate focus on girls' activities and sartorial self-expression, creating an air of self-surveillance. This thesis argues that this can cause harm in two ways. Firstly, the fear and management of sexualisation may displace public discourses about the actual abuse of children that happens in and outside of the home. Secondly, this is particularly advantageous for boys and men, who are now excluded not only of responsibility, but from the discourse altogether. Nonprotectionist feminist scholarship further recognises a contradiction within antisexualisation debates. Protectionist writers set themselves up as authorities on the cultural perspective of the care for girls and place girls simultaneously as impressionable, immature and untrustworthy, and hence in need of regulation, but also as alluring and corrupting and hence implicated in their own sexual victimisation. This thesis adds to the existing liberal debates by undertaking a systematic study of select government reviews, newspapers and populist manuals. While sexualisation as a topic has enjoyed scholarly investigation, this thesis examines these protectionist contradictions in sexualisation discourses through a specific analysis of dress as a social communicator and point of contention through cultural and fashion theory. This thesis places itself within non-protectionist feminist research which critiques protectionist propensity for equating innocence with purity and sexual inactivity in a moralistic enterprise, which criticises and shames girls in their dress and considers them corrupting of others' innocence

Commodifying consciousness: A visual analysis and discussion on neoliberal multiculturalism in advertising

Brands are employing neoliberal multicultural strategies to target and depict marginalized communities. These strategies are seen as indicative of positive social change that has been fueled by a growing consciousness among those who desire, and demand, inclusion and authenticity. An industry argument is that “diverse” ads speak to everyone, especially marginalized peoples who are encouraged to consume the brands advertised. The purpose of this study is to first critically and visually analyze an ad featuring Black, Latina and Asian women, and to then facilitate space for perceptions of ads featuring women of their same race via semi-structured interviews. This study operates through a womanist lens and utilizes both critical discourse analysis and visual grammar theory as its theoretical framework. A social semiotic analysis of an Urban Decay Instagram ad revealed communications of neoliberal discourse as well as the inclusion of postfeminist and postracial discourse, which are categorized as co-optations of consciousness. These co-optations in no way substitute for ongoing efforts to dismantle oppressive systems. They in fact serve as subtle reinforcement. Semi-structured interviews among 33 women were conducted, including 11 who self-identified as Black, 11 as Latina and 11 as Asian. Various other identities, including class, nationality and sexuality were captured via an identity questionnaire. A thematic analysis of interview data revealed that participants’ intersecting identities of race and gender contributed to their interpretation of the ads and to their awareness of being (mis)represented, or absent, in advertising. Self-awareness of their identities and mine (as a Black woman researcher) facilitated a safe space for open discussion and revealed opportunities for organizing around difference. Consideration should be given to the dominant ideologies that are materialized in ads featuring women of color. Though, at times, seen as “authentic,” the ads project the false narrative that we live in a postracial or postfeminist society, and women of color question the intention behind these “new and improved” representations. Unique contributions provided from this study include a highlight of the negotiation of perceived authenticity towards brand influencers and mediated representations of women of color; an engagement with the problematizing of representation via the process of social media reposting--a strategy that contributes to the spread of indistinguishable advertising and enables brands to claim “diversity” and “inclusion” without doing the actual work; and an assessment of how, through appropriation, women of color become accessories to the brand themselves, in a subtle, yet equally powerful form of dehumanization that is replacing the overt stereotypical depictions of the past