Girls and Boys

Catherine Driscoll

doi:10.5130/csr.v25i2.6909

Abstract

Girls and Boys

Highlights

I stumbled into this field in the mid-1990s, on my way to a PhD thesis on female adolescence in modernist literature
It remains difficult to be heard seriously when you take up girlhood or girl culture as things of scholarly interest and value. (Perhaps this is less so for me but certainly for many junior colleagues.) Those ideas about triviality, artifice, naivety and ephemerality that first interested me in modern figures of girlhood continue to have sticky consequences
I gained critical purchase from the uses to which figures of girlhood were put by writers like Gilles Deleuze, Luce Irigaray or, very differently, Theodor Adorno, and this was the conceptual framework for my first academic publications, including in what was The UTS Review

Summary

Introduction

I stumbled into this field in the mid-1990s, on my way to a PhD thesis on female adolescence in modernist literature. To be clear: girls’ studies should continue to address injustices faced by girls; improved opportunities for many girls have not extended to all; and specific changes like improved educational outcomes and expanded opportunities in many areas do not eradicate all the ongoing effects of patriarchal history or patriarchy in the forms it still takes around the world.

Results

Conclusion