Below are some of the Berkshire Conference sessions with presentations on black girls and girlhood.  For the entire program, see the conference website:

https://2017berkshireconference.hofstra.edu

15 P – Black Women and Global Capitalism in the Post War Era

Thursday, June 1, 2017: 2:00 PM-3:30 PM

BRESL 112 (Hofstra University)

Chair:

Tera W Hunter, Princeton University

McQueen of the Golden Arches: Black Women and Black Capitalism in Fast Food America
Marcia Chatelain, Georgetown University

Ar’n’t I a Shopper?: The Politics of Black Women’s Representation as Consumers in Cold War Era Advertising
Brenna Greer, Wellesley College

From Goodwill Girls to Flo Jo Barbie: Global Games and the Commodification of Black Women’s Athletic Bodies
Amira Rose Davis, Johns Hopkins University

Comment:

Tiffany Melissa Gill, University of Delaware

 

26 LT – The Global History of Black Girl Citizens: Age, Bodies, Generations

Thursday, June 1, 2017: 2:00 PM-3:30 PM

BRESL 100 (Hofstra University)

Organizer:

Corinne Field, University of Virginia

Stepping Out from the Periphery: Enslaved Girls and the Jamaican Plantation Complex
Colleen Amy Vasconcellos, University of West Georgia

“Curious about Knowin’ all Them Things”: Reproduction, Intergenerational Folk Knowledge, and Affrilachian Girlhood, 1850-1945 
LaKisha Michelle Simmons, SUNY at Buffalo

De-Sexualizing the Black Girl: Child Marriage in Colonial East Africa
Corrie Decker, University of California, Davis

Intergenerational Conflict and Collaboration among African American Women’s Rights Activists in the US, 1880-1920
Corinne Field, University of Virginia

Afro-Brazilian Girlhood in the Vargas Era, 1930-1945: Insights from the National Children’s Department
Cari Maes, Oregon State University

Training for the Future: Black Girlhood and the School for Little Mothers, Bahia, Brazil 1930s-1940s
Okezi Otovo, Florida International University

Comment:

Laura L Lovett, University of Massachusetts Amherst

 

94 RT – Material Girls in a Material World: The Politics of Black Fashion and Glamour in the African Diaspora 

Friday, June 2, 2017: 10:15 AM-11:45 AM

BRESL 209 (Hofstra University)

Participants:

Tanisha Ford, University of Delaware
Siobhan Carter-David, Southern Connecticut State University
Tamara Walker, University of Pennsylvania
Brandi Thompson Summers, Virginia Commonwealth University
Kadari Taylor-Watson, Purdue University

Session Abstract

Black material culture studies is a growing sub-field that scholars of women, gender, and sexuality are using to critique systems of power, engage in discussions of identity politics, and explore the connections between the intellectual world and material realities of peoples of African descent. In that regard, it is a method and approach to the history of popular culture that allows us to engage in “difficult conversations” about blackness as a commodity, debates over “authentic” blackness, and sexist critiques of gender performance. Moderated by historian Ruth Feldstein, this roundtable will explore the politics of fashion and beauty culture across three continents and spanning the 20th and 21st centuries.

 

 127 P – Policing Sexualities

Friday, June 2, 2017: 1:45 PM-3:15 PM

BRESL 106 (Hofstra University)

Chair:

Susan Cahn, The State University of New York – Buffalo

Unexpected Connections: Women Political Prisoners in Alderson Federal Prison, 1955-1979
Victoria Lynn Measles, The Ohio State University

“Those girls seem to be faster than we are”: Black Girls Negotiating and Policing Sexuality in 1930s Washington, D.C.
Miya Carey, Rutgers University, New Brunswick

“Perverted Justice: (Homo)Sexuality and Female Juvenile Delinquency in U.S. Popular Culture, 1920-1940”
Anastasia Jones, University of Toronto

Queer Women in the Second World War in England
Josie Daw, University of Cambridge

I command the right to go places: Twentieth-Century American Girls Demand Bodily Protection from the State 
Cara Elliott, College of William & Mary

216 P – Public Health, Private Bodies: Medicine, Gender, and Power in (Post) Colonial Contexts

Saturday, June 3, 2017: 10:15 AM-11:45 AM

SC 143 (Hofstra University)

Chair:

Nancy Rose Hunt, University of Florida

Child Brides in Northern Nigeria and Health Implications 
Damilola Dorcas Fagite, Obafemi Awolowo University

Fortifying the Nation: International Health Initiatives in North Africa After Independence
Jennifer Johnson, Brown University

One Hundred Years of Syphilis: Diseased Bodies in War and Peace in Egypt
Beth Baron, Graduate Center CUNY

Model Bodies: Health, Beauty, and Belonging in Imperial Sudan
Marie Grace Brown, University of Kansas

Comment:

Nancy Rose Hunt, University of Florida

 

240 P – Bad Girls? Transforming and Performing Adolescence

Saturday, June 3, 2017: 1:45 PM-3:15 PM

BRESL 106 (Hofstra University)

Chair:

Tamara Myers, Lehigh University

Feminist Sources, Punk Methods, and Riot Grrrl Discourse on Teenage Female Sexuality
Charlie Jeffries, University of Cambridge

“lifes of trash”: Precious & the Aesthetics of Welfare
Katie Lambright, University of Minnesota

“Garage Girls: Playing with Sound and Technology in the 1960s”
Susan Schmidt Horning, St. John’s University

 

242 P – Black and White Bodies as Extracted Labor in the Atlantic World, 1700-1890

Saturday, June 3, 2017: 1:45 PM-3:15 PM

RSVLT 201 (Hofstra University)

Chair:

Michelle A McKinley, University of Oregon, School of Law

Rhetoric of White Slavery: Debating Women’s Bodies in Wisconsin, 1887-1890 
Leslie J Harris, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee

Gender, Age, and Slavery in the Eighteenth Century Mid-Atlantic
Sarah L. H. Gronningsater, California Institute of Technology

Tender Traffic: Abolitionists, Female Emigration Societies, and Domestic Labor Markets
April Haynes, University of Wisconsin, Madison

Comment:

Pamela Scully, Emory University