Class profile: ‘Introduction to Girls’ Studies’

Most students are familiar with women’s studies as an academic discipline, but what about girls’ studies?

Sarah Dougher, an assistant professor of women’s studies, is currently teaching a course titled “Introduction to Girls’ Studies,” the first of its kind here at Portland State.

Dougher said the course takes a look at what it means to be a girl through a theoretical perspective. “And by that I mean different people’s ideas about the social categories of a female person below the age of about 18,” she explained.

The course begins with a look at boyhood so that students can understand how girlhood is constructed against a version of young masculinity. After that, the class begins to examine the social aspects that influence girlhood, as well as the cultural expectations set for girls and how it all translates to their social realities.

One area of focus in the class is the way girls and girlhood have been involved in the culture of popular music.

“How are girls constructed as fans? Why do we think that what girls like is often the worst kind of music? When you Google ‘Latina girls,’ why is it always sexy pictures of young women?” Dougher said. “All of these types of questions are what we cover in this course.”

The class is currently offered as a four-hour evening class once a week. Throughout the four hours, students will hear short lectures, partake in class discussions, join in small groups to talk and even listen to music or watch clips from a film.

“It switches around, so it’s not just four hours of one thing,” Dougher said. “I couldn’t handle that, so I know my students couldn’t either.”

Girls’ studies is a relatively recent field of study. Dougher said that it wasn’t until the late ’80s and early ’90s that people, at least in academics, started thinking of girls and girlhood as a separate thing. Prior to that, the field was generally clumped with the larger category of children/childhood, which Dougher said almost always involves studying just boys.

Girls’ studies has also been combined with women’s studies, but Dougher said that too is different because girls have different needs and experiences and the categories are simply not the same.

The field of girls’ studies has been incorporated into some classes at PSU, but this is the first course devoted completely to the topic.

“I want to give props to my colleague Sally Eck, who teaches a really important class called ‘Girl Power,’” Dougher said.

Eck’s class is a capstone course that does some hands-on work with girls and students, so it’s a little different than Dougher’s course in that it’s more community-based.

Since this is the first time the course has been offered, many of the students in the class have taken Eck’s capstone or become involved with her work in some way.

“Introduction to Girls’ Studies” is a University Studies junior cluster course under the Gender and Sexualities Studies cluster, but anyone is allowed to take the course.

“There are a lot of really great perspectives,” Dougher said of her current class. “At Portland State we often are lucky because there are people in our classes who, for example, have girls, or they’ve been teaching at a day care for seven years. People with all these different kinds of experiences that can really bring a diversity of voices to the table, especially when studying girls.”