PROPOSAL TYPE
Roundtable
SEEKING
- Seeking General Feedback and Interest
- Seeking Additional Presenters
RELATED TOPICS
- Material Culture
- Public Engagement
- Teaching and Training
ABSTRACT
In recent years, there has been a surge of interest in American Girl Dolls as a cultural phenomenon. How do these dolls engage with and introduce people to public history? How do they recreate racial tropes and hierarchies? How has their resurgence in popularity, from influencers to queer meme accounts, shifted their meaning?
We hope to develop a roundtable to critically discuss American Girl Dolls as material culture, intellectual fodder, pop culture, & educational tools. We are looking for scholars, journalists, public humanists, and others with an interest in the cultural relevance of American Girl Dolls to participate.
DESCRIPTION
We are looking for panelists who want to engage with American Girl dolls from a variety of intellectual angles–with an emphasis on race, queerness, disability, and gender. We are also interested in hearing from people in all kinds of disciplines.
We are also happy for any feedback on our proposal!
If you have a direct offer of assistance, sensitive criticism, or wish to pass along someone’s contact information confidentially, please get in contact directly: Holly Genovese, UT Austin, [email protected]
ALL FEEDBACK AND OFFERS OF ASSISTANCE SHOULD BE SUBMITTED BY JULY 7, 2022. If you have general ideas or feedback to share, please feel free to use the comments feature below.
Hi Holly: This sounds like it has potential to become a broader research project, and I am wondering if you might want to consider a working group to help you identify other scholars working on this topic.
Holly – have you reached out to the folks at the American Girls Podcast? I’m not sure how active it currently is, but Allison Horrocks, in particular, has been involved with the NCPH in the past and might be a resource for you.
Hi Holly,
You should reach out to Rebekkah Rubin, who runs @iamexcessivelydollverted on instagram. She’d be a great contributor to your proposal. Additionally, as Ed mentioned above, Allison and others made contributions about American Girl Dolls to the February 2021 special issue of The Public Historian: Childhood, Consumption, Gender, and Public History.
You may wish to check with public librarians who have American Dolls circulating in their collections. We actually purchased two dolls (Felicity and Melody) as part of two anniversary celebrations (in 2019) related to our founding as a subscription library in 1794 and our Civil Rights Sit-In in 1939. We did a fair amount of research on what other public libraries were doing with the dolls at that time. While we do not have any plans to purchase additional dolls, other public libraries had very active doll collections prior to the Covid-19 pandemic.
I really like the idea of looking at the social/cultural/political etc. processes through the lens of the American Doll phenomenon. One thing that I would suggest is more closely connecting your panel to the concept(s) of public history.