Jennifer Helgren, "American Girls and Global Responsibility: A New Relation to the World during the Early Cold War" (Rutgers UP, 2017)

New Books in Sociology · Jun 4, 2019 · 1h 2m

In her book, American Girls and Global Responsibility: A New Relation to the World during the Early Cold War (Rutgers University Press, 2017), Jennifer Helgren traces the creation of a new internationalist girl citizenship in the first two decades following World War II by uncovering the activism of girls organizations including Camp Fire Girls, YWCA Y-Teens, and the Girl Scouts. Helgren shows how anxieties about nuclear warfare led educators, psychologists, and government groups to encourage girls to develop their “natural” skills as nurturers and caretakers and become homemakers to the…