Untaming Girlhoods

<p>This is an interdisciplinary examination of depictions of girlhoods through a comparative study of foundational fairy tales revised and reimagined in popular narrative film and television adaptations. </p><p>The success of franchises such as <i>The Hunger Games</i> <i>Twilight</i> and <i>Divergence</i> have re-presented the young heroine as an empowered female and often a warrior hero in her own right. Through a selection of popular culture touchstones this empowerment is questioned as a manipulation of feminist ideals of equality and a continuation of the traditional vision of female awakening centering on issues of personal choice agency physical violence purity and beauty. By investigating re-occurring storytelling frameworks and archetypes <i>Untaming Girlhoods</i> examines different portrayals of girlhoods in the 20th- and 21st-century Anglo-American cultural imaginary that configure modern girlhoods beyond the fairy-tale princess or the damsel in distress into refigurations that venture away from the well-trodden path for a new breakaway path to authentic selfhood.</p><p>This will be a useful and enlightening text for students and researchers in Girlhood Studies Gender Studies Film Studies Popular Culture and Media Studies.</p>