My thesis A room of her own. The Starlet magazine 1966-1996 is about Starlet, a Swedish girls' magazine that has become part of the cultural history and heritage of Swedish girls, but has not been treated scientifically before. Starlet was primarily aimed at girls aged 10-14 and contained comics, editorial material, and texts submitted by readers.
Right from the start, consumers were given a lot of space to participate and produce material for publication themselves. The magazine therefore spoke to young girls while allowing readers to communicate with each other, making Starlet a social medium before the impact of the internet in the 1990s. The Starlet magazine became an extension of the girl's room, with and in which readers could relax and have fun, but also ask for and offer support, try to deal with new topics and situations, and share their joys and problems with each other.
The primary purpose of the dissertation is to explore Starlet as a girls’ product and experience to understand which practices are made visible in the magazine as well as in employees' and readers' memories of it. An overarching research question is thus how to talk about spatiality and bedroom culture in relation to the Starlet magazine. Popular cultural products are a resource, not least for young people who had limited access to public forums and contexts before the internet, and my ambition is to show and discuss what was done in and with this material that was produced by and for girls for thirty years.
Opponent
Docent Blanka Henriksson, Åbo Akademi
Examining committee
Professor Anna Sofia Lundgren, Umeå universitet
Professor Olle Widhe, Göteborgs universitet
Docent Ann-Charlotte Palmgren, Åbo Akademi
Substitute
Docent Thomas Bossius, Göteborgs universitet
Chair
Filosofie doktor Eva Knuts, Göteborgs universitet
