Working Girls
Women's Cultural Production During the Interwar Years
A two-day event hosted by Saint Mary's College of California and the University of San Francisco
Friday, October 19th, University of San Francisco
Saturday, October 20th, St. Mary's College of California
Organized by Art History Professors
Paula Birnbaum, pjbirnbaum@usfca.edu
and
Anna Novakov, anovakov@stmarys-ca.edu
The period between the two World Wars presented both exciting opportunities and intense social and political struggles for international visual artists. This interdisciplinary two-day symposium explores the many facets of what it meant to be a "working girl" involved in cultural production during this time of great social opportunity, but also economic depression and backlash of conservative attitudes. Topics to be addressed include
- City spaces
- Machine age
- Modernism and modernity
- New Woman movement
- Fashion and design
- Health and fitness
- Suffrage movement
- Murals and public art
- Domestication, motherhood and matrimony
- Nationalism
- Xenophobia
- Responses to fascism
- Pacifism
