Principal
Investigator:
Nancy
Rosoff,
PhD, Associate Dean for Administration
and Academic Program Development, Rutgers University, Camden.
Dr.
Nancy Rosoff is primarily interested in the history of women;
her research uses women's experiences to examine the construction
of gender. Her current project, "The Winning Girl": Images
of Athletic Women in American Popular Culture, 1880-1920,
considers the role played by women's athletic activity in the
transformation of gender roles. Dr. Rosoff's major sources
include periodical literature, popular fiction, advertisements,
and archival sources from women's colleges and other educational
institutions.
In
the part of Nancy Rosoff's research that focuses on popular
fiction about schoolgirls and college women in the early
twentieth century, she demonstrates that the athletic activities
of the principal characters in literature frequently were
central to plot development and character depiction. These
depictions of athletic young women enthusiastically offered
a model for readers and reflected cultural approbation
for the ideal of the new athletic woman.
