Kicking off our Spring term with beauty and grace, we are joined by Margot Mifflin - our guide through the complicated, contested and copiously glamorous history of the beauty pageant
CLASS DESCRIPTION
For over a century, beauty pageants have been a complicated and contested celebration of national identity. From the launch of Miss America in 1921 to Miss World (1951) and Miss Universe (1952), race, class, faith, fashion, and gender identity have all played a crucial role in the evolution of pageantry internationally.
Through her lecture Beauty Pageants and National Identity, Margot Mifflin will identify how, modeled on Miss America, other U.S. pageants sprang up as regional expressions of cultural pride, such as Miss Chinatown USA, Miss America Latina, and Miss Navajo Nation--which requires speaking Navajo and butchering a sheep. Mifflin will discuss the rise in beauty contests that were launched in reaction to Miss Americas persistent racism, such as Miss Black America (1968), and pageants honoring trans-global identities, such as Miss World Muslimah. Pageants have both empowered and damaged women and introduced subversive winners who used their titles for political purposes. As such, the lecture will also spotlight gay and trans contestants who are changing the pageant world internationally, even as the newly minted Miss AI competition reinforces, through artificial intelligence, a stereotypical ideal womanhood.
ABOUT OUR LECTURER
Margot Mifflin (she/her) is an author and journalist who writes about womens history and the arts. She wrote the first history of womens tattoo culture, Bodies of Subversion: A Secret History of Women and Tattoo (PowerHouse Books, 1997, 2013). Her 2009 biography The Blue Tattoo: The Life of Olive Oatman (University of Nebraska Press/Bison Books) was a finalist for the Caroline Bancroft History Prize and is under option by MGMT Entertainment. Looking For Miss America: A Pageants 100-Year Quest to Define Womanhood (Counterpoint Press, 2020) is a cultural history of the Miss America Pageant; it won the Popular Culture Association's Best Book in Women's Studies Award. Mifflin is a professor at Lehman College of the City University of New York.
INSTAGRAM: @mmifflin
FACEBOOK: @margot.mifflin
BSKY: @mmifflin
SPRING TERM 2025
Monday 20th January
Margot Mifflin (she/her)
Beauty Pageants and National Identity
Monday 27th January
Verity Babbs (she/her)
Divergent Minds: Female Neurodiversity in Art and Art History
Monday 3rd February
Vex Ashley (she/her)
The Body And The Screen - Sexuality Against The Machine
Monday 10th February
Luisa-Maria MacCormack (she/her)
Holy Hags: Sinners and Sheela Na Gigs - RECORDING ONLY
Monday 17th February
Dr. Kimberley Baltzer-Jaray (she/they)
Women Who Kill: Gender Bias And Murder
Monday 24th February
Alekszandra Rokvity (she/her)
Endometriosis: A Feminist Issue
Monday 3rd March
TBC
Monday 10th March
Jennifer Anyan (she/her)
The Madonna Whore Dichotomy: Motherhood And Sexual Agency
Monday 17th March
Alyssa Velazquez (she/her)
Spawn: The Fantasy Of Women's Right To Choose
Monday 24th March
Leanne Yau (she/they)
Radical Connection Through Relationship Anarchy
Monday 31st March
Dr. Noam Yadin Evron (she/her)
Abortions: A Complicated History From The Middle Ages To Today
Monday 7th April
Lucy Cooke (she/her)
Bitch: On The Female Of The Species
Monday 14th April
Anna Souter (she/her)
Plant Parenthood: A Potted History Of Vegetal Reproduction And (M)Otherhood
Monday 21st April
Luisa-Maria MacCormack (she/her)
Feminism And The Ice Age - RECORDING ONLY
Monday 28th April
Elora Shehabuddin (she/her)
Feminism And Islam: A History Of Muslim Feminism
RECORDING
A recording of the lecture will be sent out by The Feminist Lecture Program after the event finishes, within 2 hours of the end of the class. This email will also contain any resources/reading list the lecturer shares.
Please add [email protected] to your email contacts to ensure you receive the recording as expected.
Please note that the recording will expire 7 days after sending.
PAY WHAT YOU CAN
Everyone is welcome to join this Pay-What-You-Can class. We suggest a donation of 20, however, we understand that may not be possible for everybody. Please be honest and pay what you can afford so that we can continue to offer our sessions on a donation basis.
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And that's it!
We're really looking forward to you joining us x
