American girls and global responsibility : a new relation to the world during the early Cold War / Jennifer Helgren.

"American Girls and Global Responsibility brings together insights from Cold War culture studies, girls' studies, and the history of gender and militarization to shed new light on how age and gender work together to form categories of citizenship. Jennifer Helgren argues that a new internationalist girl citizenship took root in the country in the years following World War II in youth organizations such as Camp Fire Girls, Girl Scouts, YWCA Y-Teens, schools, and even magazines like Seventeen. She shows the particular ways that girls' identities and roles were configured, and reveals the links between internationalist youth culture, mainstream U.S. educational goals, and the U.S. government in creating and marketing that internationalist girl, thus shaping the girls' sense of responsibilities as citizens"--

"This book brings together Cold War culture studies, girls' studies, and the history of gender and militarization to shed new light on how age and gender work together to form categories of citizenship. In the post-World War II period, lessons about world friendship and peace became mainstream in US schools and youth organizations as educators and youth leaders sought to reduce conflict in the atomic age and contribute to an image of the United States as a benevolent global leader. American Girls and Global Responsibility argues that a new internationalist girl citizenship took root in the United States in the years following World War II in youth organizations such as Camp Fire Girls, Girl Scouts, YWCA Y Teens, schools, and even magazines like Seventeen. The internationalist focus of youth culture in the 1940s and 1950s, much of it developed in girls' institutions, laid a firm foundation for interest in the Peace Corps, an institution that is often credited with first engaging US youth in internationalism; however, this book contends that a new girl citizenry emerged earlier, after the Second World War. With a few significant exceptions, little attention has been paid to internationalism in 1940s and 1950s youth culture, let alone girls' culture. Yet, this project shows the particular ways that girls' identities and roles were configured and reveals the links between internationalist youth culture, mainstream US educational goals, and the US government in creating and marketing that internationalist girl. By unearthing girls' voices in pen-pal letters and scrapbooks, this book reveals how postwar internationalism shaped girls' sense of their responsibilities as citizens"--

Includes bibliographies and index.

1. "What Kind of World Do You Want?" : Preparing Girls for Peace and Tolerance in the Atomic Age -- 2. "Hello, World, Let's Get Together" : Building Global Conversations through Pen Pals and Care Packages -- 3. "Famous for Its Cherry Blossoms" : Reimagining Japan and Germany in the Postwar Period -- 4. "Playing Foreign Shopper" : Consuming Internationalism -- 5. "We Hand the Communists Powerful Propaganda Weapons to Use against Us" : Defending Global Citizenship during the Post-World War II Red Scare -- Epilogue: The Watchers of the Skies.

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