Kristine Alexander. Guiding Modern Girls: Girlhood, Empire, and Internationalism in the 1920s and 1930s.
2019; Oxford University Press; Volume: 124; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1093/ahr/rhz445
ISSN1937-5239
Autores Tópico(s)French Historical and Cultural Studies
ResumoIn Guiding Modern Girls: Girlhood, Empire, and Internationalism in the 1920s and 1930s, Kristine Alexander synthesizes the histories of British, Canadian, and Indian Girl Guiding to produce a rich account of how an international movement developed in the interwar period. Her monograph begins with the diary entry from an English Girl Guide who reports on her patrol’s activities, which include a uniform inspection marred by the girls’ uneven tie lengths and by their eyes almost being skewered during signaling practice. This opening is indicative of Alexander’s approach, which draws out the specific details of individual girls’ experiences in Guiding—and the ways in which these often do not conform to official accounts of how Guides ought to think and behave—and places them within broader historical contexts such as war, internationalism, imperialism, and modernity. Further layers of complexity are central to this study, including the differences between how the organization—led by British figureheads Robert and Olave Baden-Powell—operated in relation to “white” and “Native” girls.
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