Girls' Series Fiction and American Popular Culture

by LuElla D'Amico (Editor), Marlowe Daly-Galeano (Contribution by), Eva Lupold (Contribution by), Christiane E. Farnan (Contribution by), Paige Gray (Contribution by)

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781498517621
Publisher:	Lexington Books
Publication date:	03/01/2016
Series:	Children and Youth in Popular Culture
Pages:	318
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

LuElla D’Amico is assistant professor of English and director of the Women’s and Gender Studies Program at Whitworth University.

Table of 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

Editorial Reviews

This well-researched volume provides an insightful and informative look into a part of the history of girls’ series in American popular culture. It is well-structured and organised to help the reader understand the subject. This book has much to recommend it to its readers, especially teachers and students who want to inform themselves about series for young girls and boys, and the messages they provide. What adds to the success of this book is that it covers a wide range of girls’ series and offers a look into the progress of women’s rights, as well as a view into the popular culture of the last century. This volume also manages to connect characters from different series and draw comparisons between them, which contributes to developing a new and educational perspective on girls’ series.

Libri & Liberi

Girls’ Series Fiction and American Popular Culture is an impressive and wide-ranging collection, quite equal to the task of analyzing many of the series that have influenced American girls and young women for more than a century. D’Amico’s introduction delineates the ways in which girl culture has long been influenced by series fiction and how young women have long negotiated social codes and constrictions through these novels. From studies of Alcott’s little women, to Keene’s young detectives to Shepard’s little liars, these original essays make deeply informative contributions with their well-theorized readings that offer relevant connections to each other and to American popular culture, including third-wave feminism, social media, and surveillance.

Roxanne Harde

What distinguishes this group of essays from previous similar studies, which are still rare, is the way that the essays converse with each other in unexpected ways. Not only do the readings here illuminate some unexplored or unstudied works, but D’Amico has included a dynamic and diverse breadth of authors and focuses, allowing for the similarities and complications between seemingly disparate works in this genre to bounce off of each other—the mark of a good collection and skillful editor.

The Lion and the Unicorn

By drawing critical attention to the perennially popular but much-maligned genre of girls’ series books, this collection, delivered in accessible prose, contributes meaningfully to the growing fields of girlhood and childhood studies. Challenging the common assumptions that girls’ series novels are formulaic and fundamentally conservative in their representations of gender and coming-of-age, this collection offers an expansive genealogy of a tradition that has shaped the lives of generations of girls and women. By bringing together narratives from the genre’s nineteenth-century inception, like the Little Women trilogy, with popular contemporary texts, like Pretty Little Liars and the American Girl books, this collection opens up a conversation about the ways the girl culture of the past continues to shape girlhood in the present.

Allison Speicher

The purpose of an edited collection is rarely to delve deeply into a subject, but rather to function as a series of introductions, showcasing breadth and variety. This is a key strength of Girls’ Series Fiction and American Popular Culture that promises to deliver ‘as comprehensive a historical and critical approach as possible’ (xvi). Edited collections can struggle with cohesion, but the essays in this one helpfully outline connections between the essays, creating a homogeneity that is often absent from such work.. . for folkloristics invested in the intersection of culture and identity, this book, which pays close attention to questions of genre, motif, and change over time, is a welcome addition to the field.

Folklore

In examining girls’ series fiction from the 1860s to the present, LuElla D’Amico and her fellow scholars remind us not only that classic series books are still exerting cultural influence and shaping girls’ perceptions of who they ought to be, but also that series of the present and the recent past are contending with new kinds of cultural complexities, from cyber bullying and sexual identity to the backlash against feminism. The authors offer fresh perspectives on a host of familiar and emerging heroines, from Jo March and Nancy Drew to the girls of Pretty Little Liars and Vampire Academy. Anyone invested in understanding how reading and series fiction shape girls’ identities and the way girls interact with the world will want Girls’ Series Fiction and American Popular Culture on the shelf as a stellar reference.

Emily Hamilton-Honey

Part of the Children and Youth in Popular Culture Series, LuElla D’Amico’s collection aims to open up spaces for further academic work that both validates girls’ reading experiences and critically analyzes historical and contemporary girls’ series…. Common themes of identity, community, and femininity are woven throughout the chapters, as authors illuminate the historic evolution of American girlhood through the examination of popular girls’ series fiction…. These chapters note the possibilities and real-world implications for girls’ series fiction, enforcing the significance of both this collection and the wider field of girlhood studies…. D’Amico has provided the necessary addition to critical analyses looking at American history, popular culture, and feminism that not only celebrates the experiences of many girl readers throughout history but also critically interrogates the ways in which series fiction has both reflected and shaped American culture and American girlhood.

Children's Literature Association Quarterly