WILLIAMSBURG — Nostalgia and the American Girl empire is the focus of a Talking History Program, “Spilling the Tea with Allison Horrocks,” at Jamestown Settlement on Saturday, March 29.
The Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation said that Horrocks, co-host of the “Dolls of Our Lives” podcast and co-author of “Dolls of Our Lives: Why We Can’t Quit American Girl,” and Sally Meyer, Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation director of Learning and Community Engagement, will discuss the work of American Girl creator Pleasant Rowland and how the combination of girl power and history shaped an entire generation.
Rowland was inspired to create American Girl while traveling in the area. Horrocks added Rowland had been excited by a place like Williamsburg and had wanted to see it translate more into children’s toys.
Horrocks started the podcast “Dolls of Our Lives” having been a fan of American Girl when she was younger. She recalls how, almost 30 years ago, she had been excited about the brand and the catalogs and getting her first dolls. She reconnected with American Girl once she was out of graduate school, where she had the opportunity to go back and look at brand she had loved with Mary Mahoney, who co-hosts the podcast.
After launching the podcast, the pair wrote a book about their fandom and explored how a generation of people were inspired by the American Girl brand and thinking about American history through girls’ eyes.
In additiona to American Girl’s founding, Horrocks and Meyer will also be discussing specific things from the brand, characters such as Felicity, who was inspired by Colonial Williamsburg, and real people who worked and shaped the creation as well as the nostalgia surrounding American Girl during the event.
“I think a lot of people who work in heritage fields today, they see a connection between something they got access to as a child, whether that was a historic site where they felt really special, an interaction they had with a person or a toy or series that just really resonated with them,” said Horrocks of how something like American Girl can have an impact on people’s interest in history.
“I also think it’s very important, especially now, that people see themselves as not just part of history in terms of being in the background, but that anyone can be an agent and an actor in history,” she continued. “That’s not something that’s just reserved for a certain set of people, but that everyone has a role to play.”
Horrocks feels that sentiment was not only something that inspired American Girl, but was also something that stayed with people. Horrocks noted how people who grew up with the brand look back on it and are often pleasantly surprised by how accurate and how much work went into all of the particulars of the dolls.
“They might have a quibble here and there with creative license or a choice that was made, where they might kind of see things that stretch credulity a little bit, but in general people who study material culture and particularly with the 18th-century character, there was an incredible amount of work. There was an entire team that went into researching these characters and accuracy was hugely important to the first version of the company,” Horrocks explained.
“Dolls of Our Lives: Why We Can’t Quit American Girl” is out and available to purchase through book retailers.
The program will begin at 2 p.m. in the Jamestown Settlement Education Wing and will feature a light reception and book signing with Horrocks. The event is for people of all ages who are interested in the history of American Girl Dolls. Tickets are $15 per person with advance registration at jyfmuseums.org/lectures.
