Presenter: Mary Celeste Kearney is Director of Gender Studies and Associate Professor of Film, Television, and Theatre at the University of Notre Dame
Saved by Rock and Roll: Early Girl Rockers in U.S. Teen Media
This presentation examines the role of U.S. film and television in assimilating girls to rock culture during its first decade (1956-1966). Of particular interest are fictional texts that helped make rock culture accessible and pleasurable for female youth at a time when many parents found it objectionable, most male rock critics were keen on defeminizing it, and more girls were seeking lifestyles different from their mothers’. As such, this research contributes to the small body of historical scholarship on the intersections of girlhood, popular music, and visual media, while also challenging conventional histories of rock music.
Mary Celeste Kearney is Director of Gender Studies and Associate Professor of Film, Television, and Theatre at the University of Notre Dame. Her research focuses primarily on gender, youth, and media culture. She is author of Girls Make Media(Routledge, 2006), as well as editor of The Gender and Media Reader (Routledge, 2011) and Mediated Girlhoods: New Explorations of Girls' Media Culture (Peter Lang, 2011). She is currently at work on her second monograph, Making Their Debut: Teenage Girls and the Teen-Girl Entertainment Market, 1938-1966.
Gender Studies Research Workshop website
In order to advance the program’s commitment to inter-disciplinary research and inquiry into the subject of gender, the Gender Studies Program is pleased to announce an upcoming series of research workshops. The events will include presentations by advanced undergraduates majoring in Gender Studies as well as graduate students and faculty members from a variety of departments who work in the area of gender and sexuality. The workshop will begin with the week’s presenter giving a brief lecture on his or her current research in the field, followed by a seminar-style discussion.
If you would like to reserve a date for a presentation at one of the Research Workshops please contact either of our Research Workshop coordinators: Eric Lewis or Melissa McCoul