American Girls and Global Responsibility: A New Relation to the World during the Early Cold War

by Jennifer Helgren

Overview

American Girls and Global Responsibility brings together insights from Cold War culture studies, girls’ studies, and the history of gender and militarization to shed new light on how age and gender work together to form categories of citizenship.
 
Jennifer Helgren argues that a new internationalist girl citizenship took root in the country in the years following World War II in youth organizations such as Camp Fire Girls, Girl Scouts, YWCA Y-Teens, schools, and even magazines like Seventeen. She shows the particular ways that girls’ identities and roles were configured, and reveals the links between internationalist youth culture, mainstream U.S. educational goals, and the U.S. government in creating and marketing that internationalist girl, thus shaping the girls’ sense of responsibilities as citizens. 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780813575797
Publisher:	Rutgers University Press
Publication date:	04/17/2017
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.10(h) x 0.90(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

JENNIFER HELGREN is an associate professor in the department of history at University of the Pacific in Stockton, California. She is also coeditor of Girlhood: A Global History (Rutgers University Press).
 

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
 

Introduction

1. “What Kind of World Do You Want?”: Preparing Girls for Peace and Tolerance in the Atomic Age

2. “Hello, World, Let’s Get Together”: Building Global Conversations through Pen Pals and Care Packages

3. “Famous for Its Cherry Blossoms”: Reimagining Japan and Germany in the Postwar Period

4. “Playing Foreign Shopper”: Consuming Internationalism

5. “We Hand the Communists Powerful Propaganda Weapons to Use against Us”: Defending Global Citizenship during the Post-World War II Red Scare

Epilogue: The Watchers of the Skies
 

Notes

Index

Editorial Reviews

"Helgren’s study adds a new and important perspective to conversations on citizenship, internationalism, and gender in the early Cold War era."

American Historical Review

"In a world where people are divided and marginalized, Helgren’s work offers valuable lessons about the important roles that girl citizens can teach Americans today about global cooperation and mutual understanding."

Journal for the History of Childhood and Youth

"Helgren's study provides a fresh examination of cultural diplomacy in the early Cold War years by demonstrating how American girls and their organizations advanced U.S. foreign policy. [The book]  skillfully connects an impressive level of primary research to the scholarship on childhood, gender, and international relations."

Peace & Change

"Drawing on extensive historical evidence created by girls, Helgren cogently demonstrates that despite being stereotyped as 'frivolous,' pre-adolescent and teenage girls contributed to post-World War II efforts to create friendly, peaceful international relationships while also promoting U.S. global leadership in the early Cold War.  This book is a valuable contribution to histories of childhood and youth, gender, U.S. foreign relations, and peace activism."
 

author of 'Unofficial Ambassadors': American Military Families Overseas and the Cold War, 1946-1965 - Donna Alvah

"American Girls and Global Responsibility is part of a growing body of literature that explores how the constructions of childhood and the actions of young people intersect with histories of war, peace work, and international relations. Much like the youth who collected scrap metal and weeded family victory gardens did their bit during the world wars, a shared spirit of youth was inspired (and required) to do their part, this time in the battle for winning hearts and minds."

Journal of American Studies

"Helgren addresses a missing chapter in the history of American girlhood: their roles as productive citizens in the postwar United States. This is a welcome and well-researched study that shows how girls worked to build a peaceful, outward looking, and internationalist citizenship befitting a nation seeking to reestablish ties with its former enemies."
 

author of Relative Intimacy: Fathers, Adolescent Daughters, and Postwar American Culture - Rachel Devlin

"In this exceptional study of mid-twentieth-century youth culture, Helgren provides an insightful and engaging perspective of postwar girlhood and the literature that influenced it."

Children's Literature Association Quarterly

"Helgren’s study adds a new and important perspective to conversations on citizenship, internationalism, and gender in the early Cold War era."

From the Publisher