Tani Barlow, Women Studies

Contact barlow@u.washington.edu 354345

The Modern Girl Around the World (Barlow)

This project spins out of two collaborative work groups and projects
going on, one in Seattle and the other in Tokyo.  The Modern Girl Around
the World (Seattle) is a group of six colleagues from the Departments of
History, English and Women's Studies who have worked for the last 5 years
and have received support from the Simpson Center for the Humanities, the
Graduate School, the Institute for Transnational Studies and other units
at the UW.

The second project is called Colonial Modernity and the Modern Girl in
East Asia.  Founded two years ago and operating on a generous grant from
the Monkasho or Japanese social science funding agency, the Tokyo-based
group will examine in detail the effects of Japanese imperialism in Asia
through the optic of the modern girl icon.  I am a founding member of both
groups.

My work focuses on the modern girl in the advertising industry in Shanghai
during the 1920s and 1930s.  My publications on this topic include a
forthcoming work on vernacular social science and the eugenic modern girl
(Berlin, 2005) and a piece on colonial modernity (Duke, 2005).  The Berlin
piece has images that CARTAH supported when Riki Thompson prepared images
for me.

The Institute for Translational Studies (Uta Poiger, director) and the
Modern Girl Around the world RAs have supported my work over the last
years. Individual RA's have included Helen Schneider, Kristy Leissle,
Teresa Mares, Katrina Hagen and Brian Hammer.