'What are little girls made of?'

The Tuesday Faculty Lunch Series welcomes Jill Gillespie, visiting assistant professor, Women’s and Gender Studies, presenting a lecture titled “What are Little Girls Made of?: 21st-Century Girlhood in Inside Out.” While the ‘girl’ has long been a figure of concern, over the past 25 years, concern for ‘the girl’ has proliferated in popular media, literature, television, films, in addition to academic conferences and feminist journals. Not only have girls become a public presence and interest, there has also been an increasing range of representations of them, their lives, and concerns. This widespread interest in the state of being a girl has resulted in a host of discourses surrounding girlhood. This talk uses the images in and discourses about the popular and critically acclaimed film, “Inside Out,” to address some critical questions about perspectives on the changing constructions of girlhood, shifting subjectivities for girls, and the ways in which gender impacts the understanding of the workings of the self.