Separating the Girls from the Boys—Author Explores How Consumer Culture Defines Identities

CHESTERTOWN, MD—Just who decided girls should wear pink, boys blue? In a talk at Washington College, author and scholar Jo Paoletti will share answers to that question and more. Based on research from her recently published book, Pink and Blue: Telling the Boys from the Girls in America, Paoletti’s presentation will examine how consumer culture—from cartoons to fashion—shapes and defines the sexes in the United States, and how changing concepts of sexual identity, in turn, shape the culture.

The talk, which is free and open to the public, will take place Wednesday, September 26, at 5 p.m. in Hynson Lounge of Hodson Hall on the Washington College campus, 300 Washington Avenue.  A reception with the author will follow. The event is sponsored by the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, the Department of History, the Gender Studies Program, and Phi Beta Kappa.  

Paoletti, an Associate Professor in the American Studies Department at the University of Maryland, holds degrees in apparel design and textiles and has tracked the changes in children’s clothing—and the meaning behind those changes—for three decades.  “It’s really a story of what happened to neutral clothing,” she explained in an article in Smithsonian in 2011, noting that both girls and boys once wore dainty white dresses up to age 6. “What was once a matter of practicality—you dress your baby in white dresses and diapers; white cotton can be bleached—became a matter of ‘Oh my God, if I dress my baby in the wrong thing, they’ll grow up perverted.’ ”

For more on the speaker: http://terpconnect.umd.edu/~jpaol/.

Social Historian Coontz Revisits and Updates The Feminine Mystique in Sept. 13 Visit to Campus

CHESTERTOWN, MD—Would Don and Betty Draper’s marriage have had a better chance today than in the decidedly unliberated 1960s depicted in the hit TV series Mad Men? The nation’s preeminent expert on the state of marital bliss in America, social historian Stephanie Coontz, will be on the Washington College campus Tuesday, September 13 to argue an emphatic “Yes.” A fan of Mad Men, Coontz recommends it as “a much-needed lesson on the devastating costs of a way of life that still evokes misplaced nostalgia.”

In a talk titled “Mad Men, Working Girls, and Desperate Housewives: Women, Men, and Marriage in the Early 1960s,” Coontz will discuss why social changes since the 60s have been good for families and good for the institution of marriage. Her presentation will begin at 5:30 p.m. in Hynson Lounge, inside Hodson Hall on the College campus, 300 Washington Avenue. A book signing will follow.

Coontz’s recently published A Strange Stirring: The Feminine Mystique and American Women at the Dawn of the 1960s (Basic Books, 2011) pulls author Betty Friedan “down from heaven and up from hell,” in the words of the New York Times, challenging both conservative and liberal myths about the impact of her controversial book The Feminine Mystique. Described as “an inventive biography of a book,” A Strange Stirring is based on interviews with some 200 men and women (mostly women) who read Friedan's book when it was first published in 1963, and found their lives changed in response. Dubbed “better than the original” by the Huffington Post, Coontz’s book reveals how a generation of women came to realize their dissatisfaction with domestic life reflected not a personal inadequacy but rather a social and political injustice.

In addition, Coontz examines women’s changing status from the 1920s through the 1950s, compares the dilemmas of working-class and middle-class women, white and black, in the early 1960s, and illuminates the new mystiques and new possibilities facing men and women today. “We still haven’t fully figured out how to combine a loving family life with a rewarding work life,” Coontz writes in A Strange Stirring. “But The Feminine Mystique reminds us of the price women pay when we retreat from trying to resolve these dilemmas or fail to involve men in our attempts.”

Coontz, who teaches history and family studies at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Wa., has devoted her career to the study of gender relations, families, and child development. She is Co-Chair and Director of Public Education at the nonpartisan Council on Contemporary Families, which is based at the University of Illinois, Chicago, and has testified about her research before the House Select Committee on Children, Youth and Families. Her previous book, Marriage: A History (Viking), was named one of the best books of 2005 by the Washington Post.

A former “marriage consultant” to Ladies Home Journal, she also has written for countless other publications, including the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Salon, the Washington Post, and Newsweek. Recent national TV and radio appearances include interviews on NPR’s “Fresh Air”, C-SPAN, Oprah, the Today Show, and The Colbert Report.

Coontz’s talk is cosponsored by the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Department of History, Gender Studies Program, C.V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience, and the William James Forum. For more information, visit www.washcoll.edu.

Author Jan Pottker To Read From Her Biography Of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, February 5

Chestertown, MD, January 22, 2004 — Washington College's Sophie Kerr Lecture Series and Gender Studies Program present a reading by author Jan Pottker from her book, Janet and Jackie: The Story of a Mother and her Daughter, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Thursday, February 5 in the Sophie Kerr Room uptairs in Miller Library. A reception will be held at 4 p.m.in the Hodson Hall Study Lounge with the reading to follow at 4:30 p.m. The event is free and the public is invited to attend.

Although many biographies of Jackie Kennedy Onassis have been written, most focus on her relationships with the men in her life. Pottker takes a different approach and examines the role of her mother, Janet Lee Auchincloss, in the shaping of her identity and personal destiny. The book presents a portrait of Auchincloss and surprising facts about this mother-daughter relationship.

A writer and public speaker fascinated with the history and personalities behind America's political and financial family dynasties, Pottker has been is a guest lecturer for Celebrity Cruise Line and has appeared on NBC's Inside Edition, ABC's Working Woman, CNBC'sBusiness Today, and CNN's Sonia Live. In addition to her regular lectures, she has been interviewed on more than 200 radio shows and has spoken to more than 60 social, business and professional groups nationwide. Her published works include, Crisis in Candyland: Melting the Chocolate Shell of the Mars Family Empire, Born to Power: Heirs to America's Leading Businesses, and Dear Ann, Dear Abby: An Unauthorized Biography of Ann Landers and Abigail Van Buren, which sold more than 270,000 copies. Pottker lives in Potomac, MD, with her husband, Andrew S. Fishel.

The reading is sponsored by the Sophie Kerr Lecture Series, named in honor of the late Sophie Kerr, a writer from Denton, MD, whose generosity has done so much to enrich Washington College's literary culture. When she died in 1965, she left the bulk of her estate to the College specifying that one half of the income from her bequest be awarded every year to the senior showing the most “ability and promise for future fulfillment in the field of literary endeavor,” and the other half be used to bring visiting writers to campus, to fund scholarships, and to help defray the costs of student publications.

Politics Of Women Clergy Topic For Tea & Talk Series, January 26

Chestertown, MD, January 15, 2004 — The Rose O'Neill Tea & Talk Series and the Gender Studies Program at Washington College present “Women with a Mission: Gender, Religion, and the Politics of Women Clergy,” a lecture by Melissa Deckman, assistant professor of political science, Monday, January 26 at the O'Neill Literary House. The event is free and all are welcomed to enjoy tea, conviviality and discussion. Tea served at 4 p.m., talk begins at 4:30.

While it took many generations of struggle before women gained formal acceptance into the male-dominated ministry and rabbinate, the pulpit has recently become more hospitable to women, asserts Deckman, and as their numbers grow, women clergy are coming to exert an increasingly visible political presence in the United States. Her lecture will focus on the story of women clergy's encounters with politics, demonstrating how gender, professional status, and religion can affect citizens' political attitudes and behavior.

“I argue that the combination of gender, minority professional status, and the nature of the religious traditions that ordain women act together to move women clergy ideologically toward the political left,” says Deckman. “Ironically, though, these same factors can combine to make it difficult and potentially risky for women clergy to engage in visible action on controversial issues, but many do act, even on controversial issues such as gay rights and abortion. The ways that these women navigate the nexus of congregational ministry, community leadership, and prophetic political teaching is making a greater impact on American politics, both through their actions and through their influence on the beliefs and actions of the many American citizens who attend their congregations.”

The Rose O'Neill Tea & Talk Series showcases the research, writing and talent of Washington College's faculty and is held in the College's O'Neill Literary House. Established in 1985, the Literary House was acquired and refurbished through a generous gift of alumna Betty Casey, Class of 1947, and her late husband Eugene, in memory of his late mother, Rose O'Neill Casey. Now approaching its 20th anniversary, the O'Neill Literary House is a large, eclectic Victorian home that reflects the spirit of Washington College's creative writing culture.

Illustrated Lecture Brings Chinese Geisha Life To Light

Chestertown, MD — The lives and accomplishments of Ming dynasty geishas will be the subject of an illustrated talk by Victoria C. Cass, associate professor of Chinese at the University of Colorado, Boulder, at 4:30 p.m., Tuesday Feb. 29 in the Sophie Kerr Room, Miller Library at Washington College.

"Brilliant Outcasts: On Being a Chinese Geisha in the Ming" features slides of paintings by geishas, portraits of geishas, maps, and other images of the dynasty. The Ming, which flourished from 1368 to 1644, marked a period of native Chinese rule between eras of Mongol and Manchu dominance. The dynasty extended the Chinese empire into Korea, Mongolia, Turkistan, Vietnam, and Myanmar (Burma). Before its overthrow in the 17th century, the Ming marked a time of lush prosperity, autocratic rule, and unprecedented stability.

Cass, a noted expert on women in Chinese literature and Chinese language, recently published Dangerous Women: Warriors, Grannies and Geishas of the Ming (Rowman & Littlefield: Lanham, Md., 1999). Her talk, sponsored by the Julian Emory Fund, The O'Neill Literary House, and the Gender Studies Program, is free and open to the public.