Camp Fire Girls

Jennifer Helgren is a professor of history at the University of the Pacific in Stockton, California. She is the author of American Girls and Global Responsibility: A New Relation to the World during the Early Cold War.

"Helgren's book provides an excellent model for study of youth organizations over time."-Elizabeth Tucker, Journal of Folkore Research Reviews "The Camp Fire Girls is truly a pleasure to read. From excellent analysis to captivating writing, Helgren's addition to the scholarship on youth organizations, girlhood, and outdoor education and programming is invaluable. Accessible to both the academy and the general population, The Camp Fire Girls is a fantastic piece of scholarship that succeeds in a multitude of ways and is a significant contribution to the field."-Montana Chandler, H-Environment "Helgren's work is well written, efficiently organized, and thoroughly researched. Because Camp Fire had strengths in the Midwest, historians of Kansas will appreciate her examples of Camp Fire girls in the region. The Camp Fire Girls will appeal to anyone interested in American girlhood, youth organizations, or childhood history."-Hollie Marquess, Kansas History “Jennifer Helgren provides a rich narrative about the Camp Fire Girls, a chapter of twentieth-century American youth culture that has been largely overlooked by historians. This is an important study of an organization that often found itself betwixt and between-empowering diverse modern girlhoods while promoting eclectically conservative visions of feminism.”-Susan A. Miller, author of Growing Girls: The Natural Origins of Girls’ Organizations in America “A fascinating book that grapples with the construction of American girlhood during the twentieth century. Captivating and multilayered. . . . The book is a model for how to write an organizational history that tells a far larger and more important story than that of a single organization.”-Sara Fieldston, author of Raising the World: Child Welfare in the American Century “By resisting the impulse to regard girls’ organizations as mere tools of gender indoctrination or middle-class indulgences, Jennifer Helgren’s examination of Camp Fire Girls makes a compelling case for the importance of revisiting a so-called familiar or known topic. Its meticulous research and stellar use of archives will serve as an example for undergraduates, graduate students, and her colleagues about what is possible in the history of childhood and youth. Helgren’s book will buttress the exciting array of new works in the history of girls and girlhood in the United States.”-Marcia Chatelain, author of South Side Girls: Growing Up in the Great Migration

• List of IllustrationsAcknowledgmentsIntroduction: The Camp Fire Girls Confront a Crisis in American Girlhood1. “Preparing for Sex Equality”: Gender Ideals and the Founding Years2. “Wohelo Maidens” and “Gypsy Trails”: Racial Mimicry and Camp Fire’s Picturesque Girl Citizen3. “All Prejudices Seem to Disappear”: Race, Class, and Immigration in the Camp Fire Girls4. “There Are Lots of Other Camp Fire Things We Can Do”: Disability, Disease, and Inclusion in the Camp Fire Girls5. “Worship God”: The Camp Fire Girls, Antifascism, and Religion in the 1940s and 1950s6. Being a “Homemaker-Plus”: Gender and the Spiritual Values of the Home7. "Prejudices May Be Prevented": Race, Tolerance, and Democracy in the 1940s and 1950s8. “The War on Poverty Is Being Waged by Camp Fire Girls”: The Metropolitan Critical Areas Project9. “It’s a New Day”: Camp Fire’s Reckoning and Restructuring in the 1970sEpilogue: An All-Gender Organization for the Twenty-First CenturyNotesBibliographyIndex