“Girls just wanna have fun”: Exploring girlhood through magazines and print culture
What does fun really mean in the context of girlhood? Beyond leisure, it can signal self-expression, resistance, and autonomy, while also being dismissed as frivolous.
Join Natalie Coulter, York University, Toronto and AM’s Emily Stallworthy as they examine how magazines in the UK, US, and Australia shaped and reflected ideas of girlhood throughout the twentieth century. Drawing on AM’s new primary source collection, Girlhood: Magazines and Print Culture, the session will show how content analysis reveals shifting notions of fun, girlhood, and cultural identity.
Key topics include:
- Content analysis as a powerful tool for cultural and media research
- Magazines as rich archives for understanding changing ideas of girlhood
- The opportunities Girlhood: Magazines and Print Culture offers for teaching and original research
This webinar provides fresh perspectives on how girlhood has been represented, contested, and reimagined across time and highlights new ways to use magazines as windows into identity and social change.
Please complete the form to watch on demand
Recent posts
Speaking at AM's Reimagining Primary Sources symposium, Lewis Goode, University of Bristol graduate, and Foster Duckworth, University of North Carolina, Charlotte graduate, share perspectives on the skills developed through digital primary source research and their application beyond undergraduate study.
Hear from Bryony Dixon, Curator of Silent Film at the British Film Institute, alongside AM’s Alice Hone and Joe Young‑Perez, as they explore how audiovisual primary sources support critical thinking and enable interdisciplinary research.