Princess Cultures ― Mediating Girls?Imaginations and Identities

Princesses today are significant figures in girls’ culture in the United States and around the world. Although the reign of girls’ princess culture has generated intense debate, this anthology is the first to bring together international and interdisciplinary perspectives on the multitude of princess cultures, continuously redrawn and recast by grownups and girls from the Ancien Régime to the New Millennium. Essays critically examine the gendered, racialized, classed, and ethnic meanings of royal figures and fairytale and pop culture princesses inscribed in folk tales, movies, cartoons, video games, dolls, and imitated in play and performance. Focusing on the representation and reception of the princess, this collection sheds new light on the position of princess cultures mediating the lives, imaginations, and identities of girls from toddlers to teenagers – and beyond.

Miriam Forman-Brunell is Professor of History at the University of Missouri-Kansas City and author of Made to Play House: Dolls and the Commercialization of American Girlhood (1993/8). Her recent publications include Babysitters: An American History (2009) and The Girls’ History and Culture Readers (2011).
Rebecca C. Hains is Associate Professor of Communications and Assistant Director of the Center for Childhood and Youth Studies at Salem State University. She is the author of Growing Up With Girl Power: Girlhood on Screen and in Everyday Life (2012) and The Princess Problem: Guiding Our Girls Through the Princess-Obsessed Years (2015).