Journal Special Issue on Women and Pop Culture in the 1960s

Dolly Birds and Swinging Cities: Women and Popular Culture in the 1960s, held in May of 2016 at Manchester Metropolitan University

The Issue contains an article by Katie on 'Swinging Manchester' and an article by Joan on Surfspoitation films. The collection emerged from a Humanities in Public (now RAH!: Research in Arts and Humanities) symposium organised by Katie and Joan in 2016.

The 1960s is a decade that continues to hold great fascination, even as we move towards the third decade of the twenty-first century. The iconic symbols of the 1960s seem never to have gone out of fashion; mini cars and miniskirts, op art designs and Quant/Sassoon-inspired bob hairstyles, to name a few.

The special issue is dedicated to exploring aspects of girls’ and young women’s encounters with the ‘swinging sixties’ in a variety of contexts and geographical locations. It is impossible to generalize about young women’s experiences in the 1960s as so much changed from the start to the end of the
decade. 

This special issue; ‘Representing style and female agency in the 1960s’ emerged from a symposium, Dolly Birds and Swinging Cities: Women and Popular Culture in the 1960s, held in May of 2016 at Manchester Metropolitan University.

This one day symposium brought together experts of media and popular culture to discuss the impact of alleged new found freedoms for women in the 1960s. Increased affluence, cosmopolitanism, advancements in technology, the loosening of traditional gender roles and explosions in terms of popular culture all arguably contributed to the opening up of new spaces and opportunities for women. Under them theme of ‘world’ this symposium confronts the issue of global cultural flows and new worlds opening up for women in the sixties. Presentations focus on a diverse range of perspectives including, new female cultural icons in film, music and fashion, girls comics, clubbing and dancing, widowhood in the 1960s and girls and cinema. The focus is on examples of women and the sixties from Europe and the USA. After the symposium pop culture expert and Blue Badge Guide, Jean Bailo, will lead a pop culture tour of sixties Manchester.

This symposium was organised by Manchester Metropolitan University pop culture scholars Dr Katie Milestone (Department of Sociology) and Dr Joan Ormrod (Manchester School of Art) and is funded by the Humanities in Public series.

Katie is Senior Lecturer in Sociology and has researched and published on pop music, gender and popular culture. Publications include Gender and Popular Culture (Polity) and the forthcoming Discotheque: Revolutions of Dance Music (Reaktion).

Joan is Senior Lecturer in Film and Media and an expert on comics and surfing culture has published on Wonder Woman, time travel and surfing countercultures in the 1960s and ‘70s. She is editor of Routledge’sJournal of Graphic Novels and Comics.