Princess Cultures: Mediating Girls’ Imaginations and Identities

History, English, communications, media studies, gender and women’s studies, visual studies, literacy, culture, and language education scholars from North America, Europe, India, Australia, and Ecuador present 12 essays on various aspects of the princess figure in broader culture. They examine the princess in girl-centered fantasy texts of the late 20th century; race in Disney princess movies; the relationship between princess culture and boy’s culture, focusing on masculinity, race, and Disney princes; the archetypes of the hero and damsel in distress in video games; princess culture, peers, and school culture and how princess culture teaches belonging through play in preschool; Western expectations of pop culture princesses in Qatar; how Disney movies promote monoculturalism; the development of princess culture in the early American film industry; actors’ experiences performing as Disney princesses for live audiences and their negotiations with feminism, gender, and race; how high school Jewish girls in Toronto negotiate the Jewish American Princess stereotype; and the royal cultures that gave rise to narratives of princess cultures, including the popularity of Princess Sissi and fairy tales written by women in 17th-century France. Annotation ©2015 Ringgold, Inc., Portland, OR (protoview.com)