A place where it was acceptable to be unacceptable: twenty-first century girls encounter nineteenth-century girls through amateur theatricals and dance
A place where it was acceptable to be unacceptable: twenty-first century girls encounter nineteenth-century girls through amateur theatricals and dance
Author
Fitzsimmons-Frey, Heather
Faculty Advisor
Date
2019
Keywords
performance-based research , girl-centered research , 19th-century girlhoods , at-home theatricals
Abstract (summary)
This self-reflexive article about girl-centered,
performance-based historiography uses Carole
Lynne D’Arcangelis’s cautions about self-reflexive research writing and Caroline Caron’s
concerns about girl studies as activist research
focused on social change to explore how the
presence of girls and listening to girls shaped
the knowledge that was created. By staging
encounters between living 21st-century girls and
19th-century girls, the process reveals possibilities
about the lives of girls in both eras. Encounters
drew attention to issues concerning power,
gender, agency, present-mindedness, emotion
work, embodiment, and racialized identities.
The article demonstrates how girls’ actions and
insights complicated understandings about
19th-century girlhoods and at-home theatricals
and, simultaneously, exposed power structures
influencing their lives today and opportunities to
work within or subvert them. Working through
concepts like “radical reflexivity” (D’Arcangelis),
“theatrical ethic of inappropriation” (Michelle
Liu Carriger), “the wince” (Stephen Johnson),
and the “foolish witness” (Julie Salverson), the
article describes research pivot points and argues
that ways of listening to girls alters how meaning
is made.
Publication Information
Fitzsimmons Frey, Heather. "A place where it was acceptable to be unacceptable: Twenty-first Century Girls Encounter Nineteenth-Century Girls Through Amateur Theatricals and Dance." Journal of Childhood Studies, vol. 44, no.3, 2019, pp. 85-105. doi:10.18357/jcs00019176
DOI
Notes
Item Type
Article
Language
English
Rights
Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC)
