Berghahn Books Girlhood and the Politics of Place

Examining context-specific conditions in which girls live, learn, work, play, and organize deepens the understanding of place-making practices of girls and young women worldwide. Focusing on place across health, literary and historical studies, art history, communications, media studies, sociology, and education allows for investigations of how girlhood is positioned in relation to interdisciplinary and transnational research methodologies, media environments, geographic locations, history, and social spaces. This book offers a comprehensive reading on how girlhood scholars construct and deploy research frameworks that directly engage girls in the research process. Claudia Mitchell is a James McGill Professor in the Faculty of Education at McGill University and an Honorary Professor at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. She has written extensively in the area of girlhood studies and is the co-founder and editor-in-chief for the award-winning Girlhood Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal. Carrie Rentschler is Associate Professor and William Dawson Scholar of Feminist Media Studies in the Department of Art History and Communication Studies, and Associate Member and former Director of the Institute for Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies at McGill University. She is the author of Second Wounds: Victims' Rights and the Media in the U.S. (Duke University Press, 2011). Review "Firmly grounded in gender and women's studies' core concepts and questions, students and scholars alike will find this an important contribution Girlhood Studies, which each chapter promising various applications perhaps not yet considered."- Canadian Women's Studies"Comprised of eighteen erudite, informative, and insightful articles by experts in their field, Girlhood and the Politics of Place is enhanced with the further inclusion of an illuminating Introduction... an Epilogue, numerous figures and a table... and a twenty-one page Index. Presenting a body of seminal and original scholarship, [this volume] is an extraordinary study and highly recommended for both college and university library collections."- Midwest Book Review"Much of the literature in the field can fall into romanticizing girls; essentialist notions of girls based on age-as-fact, race, geography, or socioeconomics; or theoretical constructs that mirror popular cultural conceptions rather than challenging them. This text avoids these traps. The chapters take up a significant social and political consideration in the lives and subjectivities of girls and the construction of ideas of girls."- Susan Talburt, Georgia State University"A fascinating collection of truly creative essays that convincingly demonstrates how integral and energizing 'place-making' is to girls' everyday lives, identities, activism, and scholarship. By inspiring new avenues of scholarly investigation, [this book] can potentially reshape the field of Girls Studies."- Miriam Forman-Brunell, University of Missouri, Kansas City About the Author Claudia Mitchell is a James McGill Professor in the Faculty of Education at McGill University and an Honorary Professor at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. She has written extensively in the area of girlhood studies and is the co-founder and editor-in-chief for the award-winning Girlhood Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal.Carrie Rentschler is Associate Professor and William Dawson Scholar of Feminist Media Studies in the Department of Art History and Communication Studies, and Associate Member and former Director of the Institute for Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies at McGill University. She is the author of Second Wounds: Victims’ Rights and the Media in the U.S. (Duke University Press, 2011).