Nancy Rosoff

One of my favorite days on campus is approaching — our annual Celebration of Undergraduate Research and Creative Activity, known as CURCA.  This is the sixth year that students in Arts and Sciences have presented their work in this setting.  The event is enjoyed by members of the campus community, who are able to speak with students about their work.

This year, we have 128 students participating, who worked with thirty-three faculty mentors in fourteen disciplines.  The presenters include sixteen recipients of research and travel grants and five of our research prize winners.

We have a new logo for CURCA making its debut this year, designed by Miguel Cook, an art major focusing on graphic design.

I enjoyed the class discussion we had this week in the honors seminar I am teaching about sports and popular culture, which this year is focused on the Olympics.    We talked about the influence of sports in American popular culture, pausing for a bit to consider what makes up pop culture.  We moved on to a discussion of the reading, which described how host cities develop, compete for, and garner an Olympic bid.  We will focus next on the politicization of the Games.

Later in the semester, the students will examine multiple aspects of past Olympics, focusing on preparations, logistics, the highlights of the competition, and the legacy of the event for the host city and country.  Each student will also prepare a preview of one of the sports scheduled for competition in London this summer, describing its history, how the sport is competed, and who the leading contenders are.

We will also reflect on the collegiate basketball tournaments known as March Madness, how sports are presented in a digital context, and the relationship between sports and advertising.

I spent a fruitful Friday afternoon at the Library of Congress, working through the run of Co-ed Magazine, a periodical written for high school girls enrolled in home economics classes in the 1950s and 1960s.  The magazine offered advice on fashion, cooking, interior design, dating, and navigating the challenges of one’s teenage years.

Much to my delight, I was invited to give one of the keynote talks at the 2011 History of Education conference held in Glasgow, Scotland.  The paper, entitled, “‘Nothing so becomes a woman as health’:  Connections between American Women’s Athletic Activities and Their Health, with a Few Notes on Fashion,” drew on my research about athletic women in popular culture sources.  The image shown here is the cover of a 1902 cover of the Ladies’ Home Journal. Many thanks to Mark Freeman for the invitation and to Stephanie Spencer for her generous introduction and steadfast support.

It’s been a busy fall, as I have made presentations at the Center for the History of Women’s Education at the University of Winchester and at the Mid-Atlantic Popular/American Culture Association conference in Philadelphia.  Next stop is Glasgow, Scotland for the History of Education Society conference, where I am deeply honored to be one of the plenary speakers.

I have just given a paper called “Space and Sociability in Schoolgirl Stories” at the 20th annual conference of the Women’s History Network (UK) conference in London.  The panel had a lovely audience and the discussion was lively.  Next stop will be Philadelphia in early November for the Mid Atlantic Popular Culture Association conference.

It’s been a busy summer for the research project in which I am engaged:  Transnational Femininities in Fictions for Teenage Girls in the United Kingdom and the United States, 1910-1965. 

I presented a poster about our research entitled “‘The Right Job for Judith’: Transnational Femininities in British and American Schoolgirl Novels,” at the Berkshire Conference on the History of Women in June.  The conference was held at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and I was able to stay at my alma mater, Mount Holyoke College.

Later in June, Dr Stephanie Spencer, my research partner, joined me to present our work at the Society for the History of Children and Youth sixth biennial conference held in New York City.  We presented a paper called “’I keep wondering what school will be like’:  The Depiction of Early Schooldays in British and American School Stories.”