Girl Guides Research Articles

A double-decker bus, an elephant and 300 Girl Guides: Analyzing ‘space’ and ‘place’ in Blue Peter

ABSTRACTThis article draws upon Lury's definitions of ‘space’ and ‘place’ in relation to the BBC children's programme Blue Peter (1958—present). Through an analysis of the Blue Peter studio over the past 53 years, Amanda highlights its evolution from a ‘space’ to a ‘place’ within the history of children's television. Her article considers how the Blue Peter studio's ‘infinite nature’ was achieved, alongside the role it played in creating the programme institution. She addresses the impact of major changes in the studio layout since 2005, when the studio went from being ‘tardis-like’ to a ‘cosy cubbyhole’. Amanda concludes by questioning the impact that this change has had on programme identity and whether the ‘place’ that pre-2005 Blue Peter took 47 years to create has been compromised.

Propaganda and the Flight of Rudolf Hess, 1941–45

Previous articleNext article No AccessArticlesPropaganda and the Flight of Rudolf Hess, 1941–45*Jo FoxJo FoxDurham University Search for more articles by this author Durham UniversityPDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The Journal of Modern History Volume 83, Number 1March 2011 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/658050 Views: 575Total views on this site © 2011 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Role of rural youth in agricultural and rural development: A self perceived case study of Okara District, Punjab, Pakistan

Rural youth in Pakistan play very important role in the political, economic and social development of the country. Many Rural Youth Organizations such as Chand tara, Boy Scouting, Girl Guide Movement, Farm Guide Movement and Farm Girl Guide were introduced in Pakistan. But in-spite of all these efforts, Pakistan had no formal system for organizing and training a bulk quantity of its Rural Youth. And it is time to create awareness among our rural youth about new technologies for adoption in the field of agriculture and rural development. Keeping in view the about fact present study was designed in 2008 to ascertain self perceived role of Rural Youth in agricultural and Rural development in District Okara, Punjab, Pakistan. The district comprises three tehsils (sub-division) namely Depalpur, Renala Khurd, Okara. From each tehsil, one union council was selected through simple random technique. Two villages were selected randomly from each selected union council and 25 young males whose ages were in the range of 15 - 25 years were selected randomly from each these selected villages, thus, making a total number of 150 respondents. The data were collected with the help of a specifically designed and pre-tested interview schedule. The results showed that 88.0% of the respondents had an education from primary to matric (tenth examination) and above level. Slightly more than one fourth 28.6, 25.7 and 17.2% of the respondents were labourers, farming, farming and playing respectively. On the basis of conclusions it was recommended that for first of all the educational level of the study area should be increased. To establish the cottage industry in villages so that maximum numbers of Rural Youth get employed there and initiate various agricultural developmental programmes for the betterment of Rural Youth. Key words: Rural development, agricultural technology, rural youth.

Scouting for Girls: A Century of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts (review)

Scouting for Girls: A Century of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts (review)

Scouting for girls: a century of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts

Scouting for girls: a century of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts

School, community, and family working together to address childhood obesity: Perceptions from the KOALA lifestyle intervention study

Epidemiological data on childhood obesity has prompted a significant response from both governments and academics seeking to recommend solutions to the reported ‘crisis’. The ‘Kinder Overweight Active Living Action’ (KOALA) healthy lifestyle programme is a randomized obesity prevention and intervention study designed to provide an understanding of how school, family, and community can work in partnership to holistically address childhood obesity. Located within the KOALA project, this paper focuses on the children’s and parents’ experiences and perceptions of the KOALA intervention and its articulation with school health and physical education (HPE). Observations on the interactions that occur between home, school, and community as key sites of intervention in childhood obesity are also unpacked. The study employed a qualitative methodology to gauge perspectives regarding the multiple sites of obesity intervention. Perspectives of children, parents, and teachers regarding the KOALA experience would suggest that there is value in planning childhood obesity interventions that link families with community programs, such as scouts, girl guides, and club sport. While long-term outcomes are yet to be ascertained, KOALA has provided scope for new possibilities in holistic approaches to healthy body weight.

The Good Girl's Guide to Getting Kidnapped (review)

The Good Girl's Guide to Getting Kidnapped (review)

The Girl Guide Movement and Imperial Internationalism During the 1920s and 1930s

While most histories of Guiding and Scouting have focused on single national contexts, this article takes a broader approach by discussing the early history of the Guide movement in England, Canada and India. It asks how the Girl Guide movement’s ideology and programs were affected by the imperialism and internationalism that characterized the 1920s and 1930s. The effects of imperial internationalism, the paper argues, were felt at the discursive level (through an emphasis on imperial and international sisterhood), on the organizational level (through bureaucratic changes leading to the formation of the World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts), in international gatherings, and in publications, personal correspondence, radio and cinema. However, Guiding’s varied attempts to create an egalitarian and interracial imagined community were limited by a number of factors, including economic constraints, Anglocentrism and a persistent belief in racial hierarchies.

Four Photographs in an English Course Book: A Study in the Visual Archaeology of Urban Schooling

I am a Girl Guide dressed in blue These are the actions I must do Salute to the Captain Bow to the Queen Turn my back on the LCC (Skipping Rhyme, North London, 1956–58) Reflections: An English Cour...

The struggle to develop accounting practices in the Australian Girl Guides, 1945—9: a microhistorical approach

There has been limited accounting history research in the areas of nonprofit organizations and women in a non-business environment. This article addresses these two gaps by considering accounting history in a large female-managed nonprofit organization, the Australian Girl Guides Association (GGA). In order to do this the article uses a microhistorical reconstruction of an individual to penetrate underlying motivations (Parker, 1999, p.31) and to allow the reader “to draw conclusions from a story that illustrates a fragment of peoples' lives and activities” (Williams, 1999, p.75) by revealing what would otherwise be unknown about the struggle to develop appropriate accounting practices in the context of organizational culture and history. It discloses that pertinent recommendations by GGA's fourth treasurer, Mrs O'Malley Wood, were ignored by management in a fiscally irresponsible manner. This article demonstrates that by focusing close attention on a seemingly minor individual, the researcher is able to discover the possible constraints that shaped human behaviour at a specific moment in history.

A Review of the American Medical Association Girl's Guide to Becoming a Teen and Boy's Guide to Becoming a Teen

ABSTRACT In a highly illustrated, convivial, easy-to-read format, writers Amy B. Middleman, MD, MSEd, MPH and Kate Gruenwald Pfeifer, LCSW have created a nearly all-encompassing manual to puberty. Ultimately the guides are inadequate as in-depth references and reveal somewhat conservative perspectives on gender and sexuality, but they provide an excellent rudimentary handbook for children ages 8 to 12. Covering everything from foot odor and pimples to feelings and bullies, these books would make for an excellent conversation-starter in any living room or school counselor's office, but do not suffice as primary textbooks for sexuality education purposes.

Girl Guides make the most successful nurses, says survey

Girl Guides make the most successful nurses, says survey

“It Is Not a Society for Human Beings but for Virgins”: The Girls' Friendly Society Membership Eligibility Dispute 1875–19361

Abstract The Girls' Friendly Society is a neglected social purity organisation whose exclusive focus on female chastity differed from the rescue work and condemnation of the sexual double standard favoured by most of the social purity movement. The Society's rules restricted membership to virgins and prompted a sixty‐year dispute about Christian forgiveness, exposing philanthropic rivalry and clerical division. The virginity policy was maintained throughout the moral challenges presented by sexology, eugenics, birth control, sex education and post‐war emancipation, and competition from the Girl Guides, cinema and dance halls. Only rapidly declining membership forced the Society to abandon the policy in 1936.

All the Men Are Fighting for Freedom, All the Women Are Mourning Their Men, but Some of Us Carried Guns: A Raced‐Gendered Analysis of Fanon’s Psychological Perspectives on War

Previous articleNext article No AccessAll the Men Are Fighting for Freedom, All the Women Are Mourning Their Men, but Some of Us Carried Guns: A Raced‐Gendered Analysis of Fanon’s Psychological Perspectives on WarAaronette M. White Aaronette M. WhiteDepartments of Women’s Studies and African and African American StudiesPennsylvania State University Search for more articles by this author Departments of Women’s Studies and African and African American StudiesPennsylvania State UniversityPDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Signs Volume 32, Number 4Summer 2007War and Terror I: Raced‐Gendered Logics and Effects in Conflict Zones. Special Issue Editors Mary Hawkesworth and Karen Alexander Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/513021 Views: 894Total views on this site Citations: 18Citations are reported from Crossref © 2007 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Peace Kiguwa, Garth Stevens Troubling Apprehensions of Gender-Based Violence in South Africa: Fanon’s Sociogeny as a Psychosocial Lens, Studies in Gender and Sexuality 22, no.44 (Dec 2021): 256–265.https://doi.org/10.1080/15240657.2021.1996733Nontando Ndhlovu, Cori Wielenga Unequal access to redress for women ex-combatants in Zimbabwe: an intersectional analysis, African Identities 31 (Sep 2021): 1–16.https://doi.org/10.1080/14725843.2021.1976105Seema Arora-Jonsson, Carol J. Pierce Colfer, Marien González-Hidalgo Seeing the Quiet Politics in Unquiet Woods: A Different Vantage Point for a Future Forest Agenda, Human Ecology 49, no.33 (May 2021): 297–308.https://doi.org/10.1007/s10745-021-00233-0Hamit Bozarslan, Cengiz Gunes, Veli Yadirgi The Cambridge History of the Kurds, 114 (Apr 2021).https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108623711Isabel Käser A Struggle within a Struggle, (Apr 2021): 893–919.https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108623711.037Paul Michael Garrett ‘Disordering’ the world: Frantz Fanon’s contribution to social work’s understanding of decolonisation, Critical and Radical Social Work 8, no.33 (Nov 2020): 305–322.https://doi.org/10.1332/204986020X15945757040444Margaret Gonzalez-Perez Women, Terrorist Groups, and Terrorism in Africa, (Jan 2020): 1–18.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-77030-7_93-1Jordan Galehan Instruments of violence: Female suicide bombers of Boko Haram, International Journal of Law, Crime and Justice 58 (Sep 2019): 113–123.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijlcj.2019.04.001Jakob Krais Girl Guides, Athletes, and Educators, Journal of Middle East Women's Studies 15, no.22 (Jul 2019): 199–215.https://doi.org/10.1215/15525864-7490981David Duriesmith, Georgina Holmes , Security Dialogue 50, no.44 ( 2019): 361.https://doi.org/10.1177/0967010619850346Rahul Rao Recovering Reparative Readings of Postcolonialism and Marxism, Critical Sociology 43, no.4-54-5 (Feb 2016): 587–598.https://doi.org/10.1177/0896920516630798Jane L. Parpart Militarized masculinities, heroes and gender inequality during and after the nationalist struggle in Zimbabwe, NORMA 10, no.3-43-4 (Dec 2015): 312–325.https://doi.org/10.1080/18902138.2015.1110434 Lorraine Bayard de Volo A Revolution in the Binary? Gender and the Oxymoron of Revolutionary War in Cuba and Nicaragua, Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 37, no.22 (Jul 2015): 413–439.https://doi.org/10.1086/661727Mahlon Dalley, Savreen Hundal, Davies Banda, Jacqui Akhurst, Abdelali Abdelkader, Adeniyi Famose, Natoschia Scruggs, Eduardo Correia Perspectives on Torture in Africa, (Aug 2012): 599–615.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-1638-8_38Mahlon Dalley, Jacqui Akhurst, Adeniyi Famose, Natoschia Scruggs, Laura Marcucci, Abdelali Abdelkader, Shane O’Neil, Helena Castanheira, Eduardo Correia, William Tastle Definitions of War, Torture, and Terrorism in Africa, (Aug 2012): 95–112.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-1638-8_7Beza Negewo–Oda, Aaronette M. White Identity Transformation and Reintegration Among Ethiopian Women War Veterans: A Feminist Analysis, Journal of Feminist Family Therapy 23, no.3-43-4 (Jul 2011): 163–187.https://doi.org/10.1080/08952833.2011.604536Marla Selvidge Religion, Greed, and the Insanity of War, Political Theology 10, no.44 (Dec 2009): 721–745.https://doi.org/10.1558/poth.v10i4.721Srila Roy the ethical ambivalence of resistant violence: notes from postcolonial south Asia, Feminist Review 91, no.11 (Mar 2009): 135–153.https://doi.org/10.1057/fr.2008.53

Swimming, service to the empire and Baden-Powell's youth movements

While the Royal Life Saving Society was the agency that developed life-saving drills to ensure the safety of the public and sought to spread instruction throughout England after 1891, other social organizations also saw swimming as a valuable skill that should be widely taught because of its utility. Foremost among these organizations were the youth movements created by Robert Baden-Powell, the Boy Scouts and the Girl Guides. Right from the start both organizations promoted the learning of swimming as a social good that everyone should aspire to. As part of their service to the community Scouts and Guides were expected to be able to swim so that they could render assistance in time of need. This article is an examination of the manner in which swimming was promoted in Baden Powell's youth movements, and argues that the promotion of swimming in the Scouting and Guiding movements was firmly rooted in ideas of service to others and humanitarianism.

It's Your World — If You Don't Like It, CHANGE IT:Activism for Teenagers

Children, Youth and Environments Vol. 16 No. 2 (2006) ISSN: 1546-2250 It’s Your World – If You Don’t Like It, CHANGE IT:Activism for Teenagers Halpin, Mikki (2004). New York: Simon Pulse; $8.99. ISBN 0689874480. Numerous recent articles and books extol youth civic engagement. While some highlight the positive impact of participation on emotional development or other tasks of maturation, others describe benefits to the larger community and to the state of democracy in general. Many of the “benefits” would be more accurately described as “goals,” as the authors’ findings are either speculative or insufficiently evidenced to support generalization. This tendency to overstate benefits, while diminishing the negative impacts, raises questions about the authors’ intentions. To which audience is this literature directed? Whom are they trying to persuade? Mikki Halpin’s It’s Your World – If You Don’t Like It, Change It: Activism for Teenagers provides an exception to the rule of audience ambiguity. The book is clearly titled to address a teenage audience, and the contents and language support the same mission – that is, to encourage more youth to get involved in “activism.” Halpin is an insider to pop culture, music and technology. Her recent work, including VH1 Rants and Raves, the essay “A Girl's Guide to Geek Guys” (Halpin and Maat ND), and the “Geek Handbook” (Halpin 2000) that followed, describes a person well equipped to parler with her junior readers (Halpin 2006). It’s Your World lays out nine easily navigable chapters outlining issues that youth might take on. These include: helping animals, fighting racism, saving the environment, ending war, stopping the spread of HIV/AIDS, stopping school violence and bullying, defending women’s rights, protecting civil rights and civil liberty, and promoting tolerance towards lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and questioning youth. Each chapter briefly explains the issue, describes a plan for tackling it in the reader’s own 384 neighborhood, and ends with one or two portraits of related-youth activists – in their own words – each of whom is successfully fighting the good fight. The book ends with a guide to useful sources relating to the activism topics. It’s Your World provides enthusiasm to inspire young people to take on activist roles and simple steps for doing so. This brings me to my foremost concern. Whose issues are these? Is it a coincidence that the author begins with a chapter describing the virtues of vegetarianism, climaxes with a vote to end war, and ends with alternative lifestyles? The author has framed youth activism as an opportunity to advance a series of traditionally liberal platforms with little change from those of 30 years ago. Does this book aim to objectively encourage youth to take an active role in improving their homes, neighborhoods and communities, or does it aim to clone the liberal activists of the late 60’s? I find the dogmatism of this approach limited and polarizing, treating youth as pawns in the United States partisan political battle. Ironically, the back cover of It’s Your Worldclaims the opposite: “These are the issues you care about – and now you can do something about them. It’s Your Worldwill show you how to act on your beliefs, no matter what they are, and make a difference” (emphasis added). In the oft-cited “A Ladder of Citizen Participation,” Sherry R. Arnstein (1969, 216) cautions readers regarding the political nature of participation: The idea of citizen participation is a little like eating spinach: no one is against it in principle because it is good for you. Participation of the governed in their government is, in theory, the cornerstone of democracy – a revered idea that is vigorously applauded by virtually everyone. The applause is reduced to polite hand-claps, however, when this principle is advocated by the have-not blacks, MexicanAmericans , Puerto Ricans, Indians, Eskimos, and whites. And when the have-nots define participation as redistribution of power, the American consensus on the fundamental principle explodes into many shades of outright racial, ethnic, ideological, and political opposition. 385 In contrast to Arnstein’s leafy-green metaphor, Halpin speaks directly to her young audience in a language they are likely to swallow and able to...

Native American Picture Books of Change: The Art of Historic Children's Editions (review)

Reviewed by: Native American Picture Books of Change: The Art of Historic Children’s Editions Susan Gardner (bio) Native American Picture Books of Change: The Art of Historic Children’s Editions. By Rebecca C. Benes . Foreword by Gloria Emerson . Santa Fe, NM: Museum of New Mexico Press, 2004. No citizen of the United States is immune from the major sources of stereotyping American Indians: the electronic media, advertising, and children's literature. As all of these play powerful roles in the socialization of mainstream (and even Indian) youth, it is hard to outgrow these images and fantasies. However, traditional Native American societies, in their oral storytelling (dating back at least 30,000 years), had little concept of what we call "children's literature," which, interestingly, is defined by its audience: the "protected class" of modern childhood in the Western European-derived world. Traditional Native American conceptions of "the self" locate its origins in ancestral time out of mind; children are the ancestors reborn; the notion of an "individual" attains significance as a function of kinship placement and membership of a prior and over-arching social whole, the People. Moreover, in non-Western, traditional societies, it was assumed that understanding the stories grew with time; endings did not have to be happy, nor were certain subjects taboo; and oral narrative/storytelling was the means by which cultures preserved their memory, history, knowledge, and wisdom. As one elder has said, "We are Indian people because we tell each other Indian stories." During the Treaty-making era, although treaties in international law are conducted between sovereign entities, Federal law had already classified Native Americans as "domestic dependent nations." A predictable rhetoric perceiving them as children or wards under the Great Father's protection ensued, particularly when land cessions became involved (1784–1868). No other American ethnic "minority" is paternally administered by a sub-Cabinet agency, in this case the Bureau of Indian Affairs in the U.S. Dept. of the Interior. In the later nineteenth and well into the twentieth centuries, when assimilation and forced deculturation within government and church-run off-reservation boarding schools were Federal policy after the confinement of Native Americans to reservations, an unforeseen effect of suppressing Native languages and cultural practices was the development of pan-Indian identities and a nascent literature in a new, shared language: English. One way to address a mainstream audience, early Native writers discovered, was via "children's literature." The entrée of American Indian-authored stories into the Euramerican literary [End Page 333] mainstream was thus by dint of their infantilization. (Salishan) Mourning Dove's Coyote Stories sanitized the great Trickster. (Dakota) Charles Eastman and his Euramerican wife Elaine Eastman's Wigwam Evenings domesticated traditional narrative. One of (Mohawk) performing artist E. Pauline Johnson's forums was mass-circulation magazines for children and their parents. During the same time period, English-born artist Ernest Thompson Seton started the Woodcraft Indian societies for Canadian and American white youth. In England, the Boy Scouts (founded in 1908) and the Girl Guides (1910) were negligibly influenced by Seton's model, but in North America The Boy Scout Handbook evolved from Seton's The Birch-bark Roll of the Woodcraft Indians. In 1911, the Camp Fire Girls was established. This imitative trend survives in YMCA summer camps where Euramerican children acquire "Indian" names, clan affiliations, and survival skills. However honorable the values taught, Euramerican children are only playing at being Indians, during "quality" "down" time. In the boarding schools, Native American children were not playing at being white. They had no choice in the matter. A heavily propagandistic literature took aim at graduates of Native American boarding schools to ensure that they would maintain the intended allegiance to white, "clean," and Christian values. Novelist Leslie Marmon Silko (Laguna Pueblo), doyenne of American Indian women writers of the Southwest, recalls Stiya: the Story of an Indian Girl, published by the U.S. War Dept. in 1881 and written by a white woman, Marion Bergess (masquerading as "Tonka," a meaningless name). Bergess had been a teacher and dormitory matron at the notorious Indian Industrial School in Carlisle, PA, whose former military founder Richard Pratt's philosophy was "to...

Cook Islands

Cook Islands Jon Tikivanotau M Jonassen (bio) This was a year of birthdays in the Cook Islands.The nation's first political party, the Cook Islands Party (CIP), celebrated its fortieth birthday in March 2004. By October, the Girl Guides, the oldest uniformed women's organization, commemorated seventy-five years of activity since its arrival in the country. And the Baha'i faith, the earliest non-Christian denomination to come into the Cook Islands, celebrated its fiftieth birthday. Also in October, the Child Welfare Association commemorated seventy years of service. The year also saw the continuation of a worrying population decline, unpopular political party switches by members of Parliament, cabinet reshuffles, land controversies, immigration concerns, and apprehension about economic development. High-profile personalities dominated the media, influenCIN g election preparations, government actions, and policies. The dramas included convicted New Zealand business tycoon Mark Lyon; Ministry of Marine Resources Secretary Navy Epati; and Eddie Drollett, former chief of staff of the prime minister's department. Efforts by Mark Lyon to seek sanctuary in Rarotonga attracted much attention, generating demands from the newly formed Concerned Citizens Group for an investigation, as well as expressions of unease from the two major political parties and trenchant media queries about the circumstances surrounding his residency. In an effort to win public sympathy, Lyon issued an open letter to the people of Rarotonga, declaring, "I came here for the first time in 2002 and fell under your spell. I have since moved my family here, in the hope of sanctuary from the lifestyle I wish to leave behind. Given my past, I do not expect you to embrace me nor to invite me into your daily lives. I can only hope that, given enough time, you may see that I have learned to live by your example. Like you I want my children to do better in life than Ihave done, not to repeat my mistakes" (CIN, 17 Dec 2003, 3). Some 100 unconvinced demonstrators marched in the capital,Avarua,openly opposing Lyon's effort to stay in the Cook Islands, but the fiasco continued when he was granted twelve-month residency and a suspected "$150,000 payout" was revealed. It was clear that the two major political parties did not support the government's actions in this regard: the Democratic Party condemned the government for granting Lyon the residency permit, and the Cook Islands Party demanded answers over related issues. Rumors persisted that Lyon had given money to assist the Democratic Party in its reelection bid. This was never confirmed, but the local media did discover that Lyon had received $100,000 of his money back, minus [End Page 185] $50,000 that his lawyer, Norman George (also a member of Parliament), had reserved for legal coverage. Cook Islands Prime Minister Dr Robert Woonton's revelation that Lyon was one of several people interested in purchasing the on-again, off-again Vaima'anga (or Sheraton) hotel project only added to the debacle (CIN, 6 Dec 2003, 1). Amid all of this confusion, Lyon traveled to Mangaia on his "Miami Vice-style launch" and arrived unannounced, much to the annoyance of residents. He was asked to leave, but damage to his boat forced a two-week stay. To make peace with the Mangaia people, he donated a processor for the island's growers of noni fruit (Morinda citrifolia).However, such acts of "inspired" aid did not help Lyon's situation. After meeting with citizens concerned about Lyon's lifestyle and influence on others, and reviewing allegations of pornography, drug use, and assault, the prime minister finally withdrew his support and banned Lyon from reentering the country (CIN, 16 Jan 2004, 1). Only months after calling them wonderful and inspiring, Mark Lyon branded the people of the Cook Islands "boring as hell" (CIN, 12 Feb 2004, 1). Lyon shared the media limelight with Navy Epati, head of the Cook Islands Ministry of Marine Resources, whose ownership of a fishing company generated suggestions of conflict of interest. Epati had a 70 percent stake in Te Maroro Fishing Company Ltd, a commercial fishing venture he had set up in May 2003 while head ofthe marine resources ministry. He...

A life not so fragile

A life not so fragile

A Late 20th-Century American Reimagining of Dante's Commedia

Shelley Berc's A Girl's Guide to The Divine Comedyis a reimagining of Dante Alighieri's Commedia as a late20th-century American play that makes telling points about contemporary culture. In part 1 a female Dante descends into hell not to learn the nature of sin as her medieval counterpart does but to realize the depth of the female artist's exile from the political and artistic life of the dominant, androcratic, culture. Part 2's satire inverts the medieval purgatorial ascent with real-estate-agent Virgil and porn-star Beatrice trying to persuade Dante, now a male, to accept the culture's money-based, celebrity-oriented values. Part 3 of each work culminates in a vision. One difference, however, is that whereas the medieval vision is empyreal, the contemporary vision is terrestrial. A second difference is that the contemporary Dante, a girl again, relates in a narrative the vision of community for which she was put to death. Understanding the penalty exacted for a minority perception, she voluntarily returns to the underworld to give voice to other exiles.