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Intellectual History Commons

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Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

University Library Faculty Publications

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Full-Text Articles in Intellectual History

"A Friend, A Nimble Mind, And A Book": Girls' Literary Criticism In Seventeen Magazine, 1958-1969, Jill E. Anderson Dec 2020

"A Friend, A Nimble Mind, And A Book": Girls' Literary Criticism In Seventeen Magazine, 1958-1969, Jill E. Anderson

University Library Faculty Publications

This article argues that postwar Seventeen magazine, a publication deeply invested in enforcing heteronormativity and conventional models of girlhood and womanhood, was in fact a more complex and multivocal serial text whose editors actively sought out, cultivated, and published girls’ creative and intellectual work. Seventeen's teen-authored “Curl Up and Read” book review columns, published from 1958 through 1969, are examples of girls’ creative intellectual labor, introducing Seventeen's readers to fiction and nonfiction which ranged beyond the emerging “young-adult” literature of the period. Written by young people – including thirteen-year-old Eve Kosofsky (later Sedgwick) – who perceived Seventeen to be an …


Dinny Gordon, Intellectual: Anne Emery's Postwar Junior Fiction And Girls' Intellectual Culture, Jill E. Anderson Apr 2014

Dinny Gordon, Intellectual: Anne Emery's Postwar Junior Fiction And Girls' Intellectual Culture, Jill E. Anderson

University Library Faculty Publications

In her Dinny Gordon series (1958-1965), junior novelist Anne Emery’s heroine manifests intellectual desire, a passionate engagement in the life of the mind along with the desire to connect with like-minded others. Within a genre which focused on socialization and dating, in Dinny, Emery normalizes a studious, inner-directed, yet feminine heroine, passionate about ancient history rather than football captains. Emery’s endorsement of the pleasure Dinny takes in intellectual work, and the friends and boyfriends Dinny collects, challenge stereotypes of intellectual girls as dateless isolates while suggesting an alternative model of girlhood operating within apparent conformism to postwar “good girl” standards.