GIRLHOOD AND THE POLITICS OF PLACE GIRLHOOD AND THE POLITICS OF PLACE Edited by Claudia Mitchell and Carrie Rentschler berghahn N E W Y O R K • O X F O R D www.berghahnbooks.com Published by Berghahn Books www.berghahnbooks.com © 2016 Claudia Mitchell and Carrie Rentschler All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without written permission of the publisher. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Girlhood and the politics of place / edited by Claudia Mitchell and Carrie Rentschler. pages cm Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 978-0-85745-602-1 (hardback) — ISBN 978-1-78533-017-9 (paperback) — ISBN 978-0-85745-647-2 (ebook) 1. Girls. 2. Girls—Social conditions. I. Mitchell, Claudia, editor. II. Rentschler, Carrie A., 1971– editor. HQ798.G52555 2016 305.23082—dc23 2015026967 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library This work is published subject to a Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial No Derivatives 4.0 International license. The terms of the licence can be found at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. For permission to publish commercial versions please contact Berghahn Books. ISBN 978-0-85745-602-1 (hardback) ISBN 978-1-78533-017-9 (paperback) ISBN 978-0-85745-647-2 (ebook) ISBN 978-0-85745-647-2 (open access ebook) Dedication In memory of the fourteen women who died in the Polytechnique Massacre, Montreal, 6 December 1989 Á Contents List of Illustrations x Acknowledgements xii Introduction The Signifi cance of Place in Girlhood Studies 1 Carrie Rentschler and Claudia Mitchell SECTION 1. GIRLS IN LATITUDE AND LONGITUDE Chapter 1 Under the Shadow of Empire: Indigenous Girls’ Presencing as Decolonizing Force 19 Sandrina de Finney Chapter 2 Voices in Longitude and Latitude: Girlhood at the Intersection of Art and Ethnography 38 Marnina Gonick Chapter 3 Nowhere to Go, Nothing to Do: Place, Desire, and Country Girlhood 51 Catherine Driscoll Chapter 4 Landscapes of Academic Success: Smart Girls and School Culture 68 Rebecca Raby and Shauna Pomerantz SECTION 2. SITUATED KNOWLEDGE, SELF-REFLEXIVE PRACTICE Chapter 5 Charting Girlhood Studies 87 Claudia Mitchell Chapter 6 Teen Feminist Killjoys? Mapping Girls’ Aff ective Encounters with Femininity, Sexuality, and Feminism at School 104 Jessica Ringrose and Emma Renold viii • Contents Chapter 7 Placing the Girlhood Scholar into the Politics of Change: A Refl exive Account 122 Caroline Caron Chapter 8 Returns and Departures Through Girlhood: Memory-Work as an Approach to the Politics of Place in Mother-Daughter Narratives 137 Teresa Strong-Wilson Chapter 9 Girls Action Network: Refl ecting on Systems Change through the Politics of Place 154 Tatiana Fraser, Nisha Sajnani, Alyssa Louw, and Stephanie Austin SECTION 3. GIRLS AND MEDIA SPACES Chapter 10 “What This Picture of a Girl Means to Me”: The Place of Girlhood Images in the Art History University Classroom 175 Loren Lerner Chapter 11 Modding as Making: Religious Flap Books Created by Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Anglo-American Girls 195 Jacqueline Reid-Walsh Chapter 12 Where Are the Irish Girls? Girlhood, Irishness, and LT Meade 212 Susan Cahill Chapter 13 “God Is a DJ”: Girls, Music, Performance, and Negotiating Space 228 Geraldine Bloustien Chapter 14 Creating and Regulating Identity in Online Spaces: Girlhood, Social Networking, and Avatars 244 Connie Morrison SECTION 4. STUDYING THE SPACES OF GIRLS’ ACTIVISM Chapter 15 Making Activism Accessible: Exploring Girls’ Blogs as Sites of Contemporary Feminist Activism 261 Jessalynn Keller Chapter 16 “Ain’t No Justice … It’s Just Us”: Girls Organizing against Sexual and Carceral Violence 279 Lena Palacios Contents • ix Chapter 17 From the Playing Field to the Policy Table: Stakeholders’ Responses to Rwandan Schoolgirls’ Photographs on Physical Activity and Sport in Secondary Schools 296 Lysanne Rivard Chapter 18 Girls, Condoms, Tradition, and Abstinence: Making Sense of HIV Prevention Discourses in Rural South Africa 315 Katie MacEntee Epilogue 333 Index 335 D List of Illustrations Figures 2.1. Toronto set. Courtesy: Noam Gonick. 40 2.2. Halifax set. Courtesy: Noam Gonick. 42 2.3. Gendering the Nunavut landscape. Courtesy: Noam Gonick. 44 8.1. From Generations: My Grandparents’ Reflections. Photo of my mother as a girl and her response to the question, “What fads do you remember from when you were young?” 139 8.2. Picture of Teresa and Mom, with my mom’s labeling of photo. 141 8.3. Swimming hole. Everyone else is pictured in their bathing suit. I (on the cusp of adolescence) am safely shrouded in a large bath towel. 143 8.4. Teresa in grade eleven. 145 8.5. “Maggie’s” book stamp in MacGregor’s Scotland. 151 9.1. Girls Action Foundation’s Theory of Change. 160 10.1. Ken Lum, A Tale of Two Children: A Work for Strathcona 2005. 182 10.2. Carrie Henzie, Pride, from the series Seven Deadly Sins, 2010. 188 10.3. Julie Morel, Breakfast, from the series Family Album, 2009. 189 10.4. Kinneret Sheetreet, Untitled, from the series Portraits from the Hard Bitches Callout, 2010. 190 *11.1. Eleanor Schanck 1777. Courtesy: Cotsen Children’s Library. 201 *11.2. Betsy Lewis c. 1800. Courtesy: Cotsen Children’s Library. 202 List of Illustrations • xi *11.3. Betsy Lewis <partial mistransformation>. Courtesy: Cotsen Children’s Library. 204 11.4. Sally White Dawson circa 1805. Courtesy: Margaret Ryther and Laura Berry, the Williamsburg Folk Museum. 205 15.1. Education as activism, author screen shot from author’s Facebook account. 268 15.2. The faces of feminism, author screen shot from participant’s blog. 272 17.1. Untitled. 305 17.2. Untitled. 307 18.1. Images 1 to 3 of “The People’s Who Does Not Wear Condom get HIV/AIDS.” 319 18.2. Images 4 to 6 of “The People’s Who Does Not Wear Condom get HIV/AIDS.” 320 Tables 4.1. Focus Schools. 71 *Figures 11.1, 11.2, and 11.3 are not available in the open access edition due to rights restrictions. Á Acknowledgements As the editors of Girlhood and the Politics of Place , we have many people to thank, starting with the contributors themselves. Their keen interest in researching and writing about girlhood, and their commitment to prompt submission and revision of their respective chapters contrib- uted to a smooth process. Reviewing is a critical part of publishing, and we therefore also thank the reviewers for their time and energy in en- gaging with the work of the authors and for off ering such constructive comments so generously. There are a number of people who deserve special mention. Caili Woodyard, Wilson Blakley, and Samantha Thrift of the Institute for Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies at McGill University did in- credible amounts of behind-the-scenes support work and organizing to staff the symposia and workshop on “Girlhood Studies and the Pol- itics of Place,” out of which many of the contributions were produced. Four key people provided editorial assistance and project oversight as we produced the book: Haidee Lefebvre, Lukas Labacher and Michelle Harazny of the Participatory Cultures Lab in the Faculty of Education, along with Emily Raine. Then Ann Smith brought it all together, and the book has been greatly enhanced by her contribution. Finally, we are grateful to the Social Sciences and Humanities Re- search Council of Canada for their fi nancial support of the editing and production of this book through the Connections Program, Media@ McGill, and the Dean of Arts Development Fund at McGill University, and for funds available to both the James McGill Professor in Integrated Studies in Education, and the William Dawson Scholar of Feminist Media Studies. We would also like to thank our publisher, Berghahn Books, for being willing to take on this book project in the fi rst place. Claudia Mitchell and Carrie Rentschler Á INTRODUCTION The Signifi cance of Place in Girlhood Studies Carrie Rentschler and Claudia Mitchell What’s Place Got to Do with It? From the bouncy pop songs of Taylor Swift to recent activist videos that make visible sexual and racial harassment against girls, and social media networks that reveal girl activists in action, girls loudly proclaim their needs and rights to places for and as girls. Place is a stage and practice of power; it is also the site of great pleasures and possibilities for girls. As Timothy Cresswell argues, we do not just experience some- thing, we experience things “in place” (2014: 38). Experience, then, is also at the heart of what place means and does; it is something that is practiced and enacted in girls’ daily lives, in their localities. As geogra- phers Doreen Massey and Nigel Thrift argue, “place has become one of the key means by which the social sciences and humanities are att empt- ing to lever open old ways of proceeding and telling new stories about the world” (2009: 276–277), a world that is deeply marked and territo- rialized around lived experiences of gender, race, sexuality, class, age, citizenship, and other social diff erences, privileges, and oppressions. Just as place as a concept is of great signifi cance to geography, so, too, is it crucial to the study of girlhood. The chapters of this book approach place as an especially productive and enabling concept in the fi eld of girlhood studies, one that provides needed specifi city to the very meaning of girl. Refl ecting on her study of country girlhood in Australia, Catherine Driscoll argues that local specifi city “produces and evaluates styles of girlhood and distinctions between types of girl” (2008: 78) in ways that, without explicit att ention to space and place, tend to be grouped under the less-diversifi ed term girl culture.