Stock image for illustration purposes only - book cover, edition or condition may vary.
Imagining la Chica Moderna: Women, Nation, and Visual Culture in Mexico, 1917–1936
Joanne Hershfield
€ 36.39
FREE Delivery in Ireland
Description for Imagining la Chica Moderna: Women, Nation, and Visual Culture in Mexico, 1917–1936
Paperback. A look at how the modern woman was envisioned in postrevolutionary Mexican popular culture and how she figured in contestations over Mexican national identity. Num Pages: 216 pages, 68 illustrations. BIC Classification: 1KLCM; JFC; JFSJ1. Category: (P) Professional & Vocational. Dimension: 158 x 228 x 18. Weight in Grams: 372.
In the years following the Mexican Revolution, visual images of la chica moderna, the modern woman, au courant in appearance and attitude, popped up in mass media across the country. Some of the images were addressed directly to women through advertisements, as illustrations accompanying articles in women’s magazines, and on the “women’s pages” in daily newspapers. Others illustrated domestic and international news stories, promoted tourism, or publicized the latest Mexican and Hollywood films. In Imagining la Chica Moderna, Joanne Hershfield examines these images, exploring how the modern woman was envisioned in Mexican popular culture and how she figured into postrevolutionary contestations over Mexican national identity.
Through her detailed interpretations of visual representations of la chica moderna, Hershfield demonstrates how the images embodied popular ideas and anxieties about sexuality, work, motherhood, and feminine beauty, as well as class and ethnicity. Her analysis takes into account the influence of mexicanidad, the vision of Mexican national identity promoted by successive postrevolutionary administrations, and the fashions that arrived in Mexico from abroad, particularly from Paris, New York, and Hollywood. She considers how ideals of the modern housewife were promoted to Mexican women through visual culture; how working women were represented in illustrated periodicals and in the Mexican cinema; and how images of traditional “types” of Mexican women, such as la china poblana (the rural woman), came to define a “domestic exotic” form of modern femininity. Scrutinizing photographs of Mexican women that accompanied articles in the Mexican press during the 1920s and 1930s, Hershfield reflects on the ways that the real and the imagined came together in the production of la chica moderna.
Product Details
Format
Paperback
Publication date
2008
Publisher
Duke University Press United States
Number of pages
216
Condition
New
Number of Pages
277
Place of Publication
North Carolina, United States
ISBN
9780822342380
SKU
V9780822342380
Shipping Time
Usually ships in 15 to 20 working days
Ref
99-26
About Joanne Hershfield
Joanne Hershfield is Professor of Media Studies and Chair of the Curriculum in Women’s Studies at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. She is the author of The Invention of Dolores del Rio and Mexican Cinema/Mexican Woman, 1940–1950 and a coeditor of Mexico’s Cinema: A Century of Film and Filmmakers.
Reviews for Imagining la Chica Moderna: Women, Nation, and Visual Culture in Mexico, 1917–1936
“This interesting volume approaches a very important topic: the changes in visual culture relating to middle- and upper-class women in Mexico during the years immediately following the violence of the Mexican revolution. . . . [T]his introduction to the topic of changing visual culture related to women in a time of political, economic, and social change is well conceived and fascinating.” - Linda B. Hall, The Americas “With Imagining la Chica Moderna, Joanne Hershfield has made another important contribution to our understanding of popular culture in post-revolutionary Mexico.” - Stephanie Mitchell, Social History “Joanne Hershfield’s intriguing monograph, Imagining la Chica Moderna reminds readers of an era following the 1910-1920 Mexican revolution in which multiple cultural experiments emerged. . . . Imaging La Chica Moderna is as insightful as it is suggestive.” - Marjorie Becker, Journal of Social History “Richly illustrated, this book provides a smart, engaging and accessible study of Mexican modernity through the lens of popular visual culture.” - Freya Schiwy, Bulletin of Latin American Research “[A] detailed and comprehensive study.” - Georgina Jimenez, Latin American Review of Books “[S]everal aspects of Hershfield’s study recommend it for classroom use. . . . [She] writes clearly, carefully avoids jargon and cumbersome theoretical digressions, and assumes no prior knowledge of Mexican history. Her book might be productively used in any class that seeks to explore the relationship between visual culture and social life.” - Jocelyn Olcott, American Historical Review “Imagining la Chica Moderna is an engaging book that both demonstrates the role of gender in fashioning the Mexican nation and underscores the primacy of popular culture in that enterprise.”-Ann Marie Stock, editor of Framing Latin American Cinema: Contemporary Critical Perspectives “Joanne Hershfield’s book will become an essential reference guide for unpacking la chica moderna as a central trope of postrevolutionary Mexican society. By demonstrating the ways that ‘the modern girl’ was simultaneously cosmopolitan and native, Hershfield makes sense of the seemingly out-of-place phenomenon of the ‘Mexican flapper’ and her multiple meanings within the project of Mexican nationhood.”-Eric Zolov, author of Refried Elvis: The Rise of the Mexican Counterculture “[A] detailed and comprehensive study.” - Georgina Jimenez (Latin American Review of Books) “[S]everal aspects of Hershfield’s study recommend it for classroom use. . . . [She] writes clearly, carefully avoids jargon and cumbersome theoretical digressions, and assumes no prior knowledge of Mexican history. Her book might be productively used in any class that seeks to explore the relationship between visual culture and social life.” - Jocelyn Olcott (American Historical Review) “Joanne Hershfield’s intriguing monograph, Imagining la Chica Moderna reminds readers of an era following the 1910-1920 Mexican revolution in which multiple cultural experiments emerged. . . . Imaging La Chica Moderna is as insightful as it is suggestive.” - Marjorie Becker (Journal of Social History) “Richly illustrated, this book provides a smart, engaging and accessible study of Mexican modernity through the lens of popular visual culture.” - Freya Schiwy (Bulletin of Latin American Research) “This interesting volume approaches a very important topic: the changes in visual culture relating to middle- and upper-class women in Mexico during the years immediately following the violence of the Mexican revolution. . . . [T]his introduction to the topic of changing visual culture related to women in a time of political, economic, and social change is well conceived and fascinating.” - Linda B. Hall (The Americas) “With Imagining la Chica Moderna, Joanne Hershfield has made another important contribution to our understanding of popular culture in post-revolutionary Mexico.” - Stephanie Mitchell (Social History)