Girlhood Aesthetics: Coming of Age in the Cultural Imaginary

Girlhood art, literature, and media have often been discussed via representational analysis, staking moralizing claims by labelling some representations “good” and others as “bad” for an imagined audience of real girls “out there.” This approach arises from what Gabrielle Owen describes as a conflation of “the discursive category child and the lived experiences of children” (A Queer History of Adolescence, 10). In other words, in girlhood studies (and childhood studies more broadly), the construction of the child through visual and literary cultures is often mistaken for the unmediated communication of real childhood experience.

This approach risks two negative outcomes for girlhood studies. Firstly, it characterizes girls as passive, vulnerable, and always in need of cultural policing (Owen, 11). Secondly, and of central concern for this seminar, it neglects girlhood’s impact on visual culture and aesthetics. Drawing from Fiona Handyside’s observation that “girlhood is a visual construction” (Sofia Coppola: A Cinema of Girlhood, 49) this seminar insists that girlhood art, literature, and media have their own unique stylistic approaches to coming-of-age narratives, demanding careful aesthetic analysis.

Girlhood is a space of endless becoming, of experimentation, of fluidity; this seminar thus invites proposals tackling any aspect of girlhood’s kaleidoscopic aesthetic forms, from the cute, the pretty, and the decorative to the angry, the monstrous, and the abject.

In short, this seminar asks: What constitutes an aesthetic of girlhood? What does girlhood look and feel like across a range of cultures, eras, and mediums? How is girlhood constructed as a site of world-building in art, literature, and media? And: How might girlhood aesthetics be deployed and even weaponized as a medium for the “wondrous anarchy” of childhood (Jack Halberstam, Queer Art of Failure, 3), reasserting girlhood agency through aesthetic form itself?  

Possible topics might include, but are not limited to:

Transcultural analyses of girlhood art, literature, and/or media
Antisocial girlhood (politics of refusal, political anger)
Aesthetics of queer and/or trans girlhoods
Movements or eras in girlhood aesthetics (e.g., Riot grrrl, brat)
Cringe comedy and the coming-of-age narrative
Unruly embodiment
Aesthetics of vulnerability
Girlhood in the Global South
Girls’ social media output and networked aesthetics
Cultures of “cuteness” and/or kawaii cultures
BIPOC girlhoods
Girlhood aesthetics under censorship
Autobiographical depictions of girlhood (girlhood remembered, mourned)
Prettiness and decorativeness
Authorship or auteur studies of girlhood writers/artists (e.g., Céline Sciamma, Toni Morrison, Shirley Jackson)

Please email Amanda Greer at [email protected] with any questions about this seminar. Looking forward to reading your submissions!