Description
Book SynopsisDuring the 1920s and 1930s, in cities from Beijing to Bombay, Tokyo to Berlin, Johannesburg to New York, the Modern Girl made her flashy, always fashionable appearance in city streets and cafes, in films, advertisements, and illustrated magazines. This work tracks the Modern Girl as she emerged as a global phenomenon during the 1920s and 1930s.
Trade Review“Rarely do collections offer both a compelling object of study
and a sophisticated, portable method emanating out of concrete historical particulars. In doing so, the Modern Girl Around the World Research Group models collective feminist critique even as it illuminates new intellectual pathways and raises questions about the uneven terrain of the global and the analytical power of ‘connective comparison’ that will find interlocutors across an array of scholarly projects.”—
Antoinette Burton, author of
The Postcolonial Careers of Santha Rama Rau“The study of the Modern Girl exemplified by this groundbreaking collection and research project will reconfigure the ways we understand modernity, globalization, gender, and consumption. This book is sorely needed.”—
Caren Kaplan, co-editor of
Between Woman and Nation: Nationalisms, Transnational Feminisms, and the State“This is a truly revelatory work of international scope. The authors' innovative collaborative method and their theory of ‘multidirectional citation’ provide exciting new points of departure for the global history of gender formation and of everything else besides.”—
Nancy F. Cott, Harvard University
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix
1. The Modern Girl as Heuristic Device: Collaboration, Connective Comparison, Multidirectional Citation / The Modern Girl Around the World Research Group (Alys Eve Weinbaum, Lynn M. Thomas, Priti Ramamurthy, Uta G. Poiger, Madeleine Y. Dong, and Tani E. Barlow) 1
2. The Modern Girl Around the World: Cosmetics Advertising and the Politics of Race and Style/ The Modern Girl Around the World Research Group (Alys Eve Weinbaum, Lynn M. Thomas, Priti Ramamurthy, Uta G. Poiger, Madeleine Y. Dong, and Tani E. Barlow) 25
3. From the Washtub to the World: Madam C. J. Walker and the "Re-creation" of Race Womanhood, 1900-1935 / Davarian L. Baldwin 55
4. Making the Modern Girl French: From New Woman to Éclaireuse / Mary Louise Roberts 77
5. The Modern Girl and Racial Respectability in 1930s South Africa / Lynn M. Thomas 96
6. Racial Masquerade: Consumption and Contestation of American Modernity / Alys Eve Weinbaum 120
7. All-Consuming Nationalism: The Indian Modern Girl in the 1920s and 1930s / Priti Ramamurthy 147
8. The Dance Class or the Working Class: The Soviet Modern Girl / Anne E. Gorsuch 174
9. Who Is Afraid of the Chinese Modern Girl? / Madeleine Y. Dong 194
10. "Blackfella Missus Too Much Proud": Techniques of Appearing, Femininity, and Race in Australian Modernity / Liz Conor 220
11. The "Modern Girl" Question in the Periphery of Empire: Colonial Modernity and Mobility among Okinawan Women in the 1920s and 1930s / Ruri Ito 240
12. Contesting Consumerisms in Mass Women's Magazines / Barbara Sato 263
13. Buying In: Advertising and the Sexy Modern Girl Icon in Shanghai in the 1920s and 1930s / Tani E. Barlow 288
14. Fantasies of Universality?
Neue Frauen, Race, and Nation in Weimer and Nazi Germany / Uta G. Poiger 317
Concluding Commentaries
15. Girls Lean Back Everywhere / Kathy Peiss 347
16. After the Grand Tour: The Modern Girl, the New Woman, and the Colonial Maiden / Miriam Silverberg 354
17. The Modern Girl and Commodity Culture / Timothy Burke 362
Bibliography 371
Contributors 405
Index 409
