Did American Girl Dolls Do Right By History? (Part 2)

Civics 101

NHPR

Government, History, Society & Culture

4.2 • 2.6K Ratings

🗓️ 19 September 2023

⏱️ 49 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This episode of Civics 101 is the second chapter of a story about American Girl dolls, and what this beloved brand got right – and wrong – about the American experience. If you haven't heard part one yet, make sure to go back and take a listen! DONATE TO CIVICS 101 NOW AND GET OUR NEW STICKER! CLICK RIGHT HERE TO SUPPORT OUR WORK. (YOU CAN ALSO GET A VERY COOL BASEBALL CAP!) Guests include Marcia Chatelain Pulitzer Prize-winning author and the Penn Presidential Company Professor of Africana Studies at the University of Pennsylvania; Spencer Crew, former president of the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center and professor of history at George Mason University; Emily Zaslow, author of Playing with America’s Doll: A Cultural Analysis of the American Girl Collection; and Molly Rosner, author of Playing with History: American Identities and Children’s Consumer Culture. CLICK HERE: Visit our website to see all of our episodes, donate to the podcast, sign up for our newsletter, get free educational materials, and more! To see Civics 101 in book form, check out A User's Guide to Democracy: How America Works by Hannah McCarthy and Nick Capodice, featuring illustrations by Tom Toro. Check out our other weekly NHPR podcast, Outside/In - we think you'll love it! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	You are listening to Civics 101. I'm Hannah McCarthy. I am here with my co-host Nick
0:12.9	Capady-J. And my dear dear friend, Justine Paradise. Hello, Nick. Hello, Justine.
0:18.5	Hi. It's for having me. Hello. Hello. Justine, for those of you who don't know, is also
0:23.8	a producer and so many other things in a podcast called Outside In. And we thank her very
0:28.9	much for being here. Both of you have started a journey with me, and we are going to complete
0:34.2	that journey in this part two of our, I suppose, rather unusual two-part series here on Civics 101,
0:42.8	because we're talking about dolls. Yeah, I mean, I think I get it at this point, Hannah, but yeah,
0:49.6	you sure are. Specifically American Girl Dolls. And you can get the full download of American
0:55.3	Girl's early history, and I warmly recommend you do, because without it, this will not make a lot
1:00.2	of sense in part one of this two-parter, but here in part two. We're going to ask some questions
1:05.6	about what it actually means to craft the American Girl narrative. What is an American Girl? And how does
1:14.8	a company that makes toys also craft that narrative responsibly?
1:33.2	I have had limited conversations with people inside the brand and have done a lot of research
1:38.0	on the brand, so I can't say if everybody is aware of that social responsibility, but I can say
1:43.7	that, you know, even from the very beginning, I think there's some really interesting historic
1:49.6	conversations about the brand's responsibility and that tension around profit.
1:54.8	This is Emily Zoslow, author of Playing with America's Doll, a cultural analysis of the American
2:00.8	Girl collection. I was really interested then in the historical dolls and the stories that the
2:08.2	brand was telling about American Girl, because if you have a brand that claims to represent American
2:13.6	Girl and to be American Girl, that kind of leads one to ask two really important questions.
2:20.2	How does the brand define American and how does the brand define Girl? So I was going to
2:25.5	be interested in both of those things. So Emily has researched the Pleasant Company and American Girl
	...

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