Making Connections: The Relational Worlds of Adolescent Girls at Emma Willard School

Making Connections maps new territory in the field of psychology. The essays in this volume are "a series of exercises en route to a new psychology of adolescence and women [and] part of a process that they also describe: of changing a tradition by including girls' voices, of listening to girls and asking again about the meaning of self, relationship, and morality-concepts central to any psychology of human development Each essay originated with a question that arose or became clarified in the experience of the research. No attempt has been made to unify these essays or to arrive at a central thesis, beyond the common intention to listen for the ways in which girls orchestrate themes of connection and separation and concerns about care and justice in speaking about themselves, about their relationships, and about experiences of conflict "When Women's Studies is joined with the study of girls development it becomes clearer why adolescence is a critical time in girls' lives-a time when girls are in danger of losing their voices and thus losing connection with others, and also a time when girls, gaining voice and knowledge, are in danger of knowing the unseen and speaking the unspoken and thus losing connection with what is commonly taken to be 'reality.' This crisis of connection in girls' lives at adolescence links the psychology of women with the most basic questions about the nature of relationships and the definition of reality. Girls questions about relationships and about reality, however, also tug at women's silences."

Table of Contents:
p> Acknowledgments Contributors Note to the Harvard Edition Prologue Preface Teaching Shakespeare's Sister: Notes from the Underground of Female Adolescence Carol Gilligan Listening to Voices We Have Not Heard Emma Willard Girls' Ideas about Self, Relationships, and Morality Nona P. Lyons Conceptions of Separation and Connection in Female Adolescents Lori Stern When Is a Moral Problem Not a Moral Problem? Morality, Identity, and Female Adolescence Lyn Mikel Brown Save the World, Save Myself Responses to Problematic Attachment Judith P. Salzman Unfairness and Not Listening Converging Themes in Emma Willard Girls' Development Elizabeth Bernstein and Carol Gilligan The Body Politic Normal Female Adolescent Development and the Development of Eating Disorders Catherine Steiner-Adair Competencies and Visions Emma Willard Girls Talk about Being Leaders Nona P. Lyons, Jane Forbes Saltonstall, and Trudy J. Hammer Racial Identity Formation and Transformation Janie Victoria Ward The View from Step Number 16 Girls from Emma Willard School Talk about Themselves and Their Futures Janet Mendelsohn Daughters' Views of Their Relationships with Their Mothers Sharon Rich Girls' Sexual Choices: Looking for What Is Right The Intersection of Sexual and Moral Development Kathleen Holland Bollerud, Susan Boynton Christopherson, and Emily Schultz Frank Reflections Conversations with Emma Willard Teachers about Their Participation in the Dodge Study Epilogue Soundings into Development Carol Gilligan, Annie Rogers, and Lyn Mikel Brown

About the Author :
Carol Gilligan is University Professor at the New York University School of Law.

Review :
This [is a] carefully edited set of essays… While Gilligan’s In a Different Voice would be a better introduction to her revisionist work on moral reasoning, this volume provides an application of her approach that will help educators, psychologists, and parents of teenaged girls listen and understand. [The book] is an illuminating and thought provoking collection of essays which explore themes in female adolescent psychological development… These papers relate particularly to a longitudinal study involving a series of interviews which took place between 1981 and 1984 with students at a day and boarding school for girls—Emma Willard School, New York… The authors try to give girls a ‘voice’—to listen to what girls themselves had to say about ‘the meaning of self, relationship and morality.’ Through text which is rich with examples of the girls’ own narratives, the authors examine a range of developmental topics… The arguments developed within the papers are both challenging and stimulating. They provide interesting reading and are likely to encourage readers to rethink and reframe their understanding of adolescent girls in Western culture. Recommended reading for anyone who has anything to do with the education of girls.