Girls Will Be Boys! Screening and Book Party

Friday, April 8, 2016, 7-11PM

SAW Video Media Art Centre

67 Nicholas Street, Ottawa



Free. All are welcome!

ASL interpretation provided upon request



Wheelchair accessible entrance at 2 Daly Ave.

Download the Poster!

Celebrating the publication of Girls Will Be Boys: Cross-Dressed Women, Lesbians, and American Cinema (Rutgers University Press, 2016) by Laura Horak.

Five short silent films featuring cross-dressed women with live musical accompaniment by Carleton musicians: Alex Harea, Amieke Walker, Dave Davies, Devon Witol, Jaimie Orser, Jesse Stewart, Joyce Mwandemange, Kelsey Hayes, Marc Vincent, Michael Sheppard, Mike Giambardino, Patrick McIssac, and Ramera Abraham.

Including:

Darling of the C.S.A. (1912) – Newly restored!

The House with Closed Shutters (1910)

The Two Roses (1910) – Starring the “Thanhouser Kid” (on book cover)

A Lively Affair (1914)

What’s the World Coming To? (1926) – Newly restored!

Books for sale at 30% off!

Presented with support from SAW Video and Carleton University’s School for Studies in Art and Culture (SSAC), Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (FASS), Institute for Comparative Studies in Literature, Art and Culture (ICSLAC), Institute for Interdisciplinary Studies, and Pauline Jewett Institute of Women’s and Gender Studies.

ASL interpretation provided upon request. Wheelchair accessible entrance at 2 Daly Ave.

For more information or to inquire about accessibility, please contact laura.horak@carleton.ca.

RSVP on the event’s Facebook page!

About the book



“A meticulously researched, astutely argued, and highly readable text.”

—Publisher’s Weekly

“Laura Horak’s Girls Will Be Boys is without peer as a historical contribution to queer scholarship on early film. It is a revisionist work that draws upon a wealth of historical research to completely overturn previous accounts.”

—Robert J. King, author of The Fun Factory: The Keystone Film Company and the Emergence of Mass Culture

Marlene Dietrich, Greta Garbo, and Katharine Hepburn all made lasting impressions with the cinematic cross-dressing they performed onscreen. What few modern viewers realize, however, is that these seemingly daring performances of the 1930s actually came at the tail end of a long wave of gender-bending films that included more than 400 movies featuring women dressed as men.

Girls Will Be Boys excavates a rich history of gender-bending film roles, enabling readers to appreciate the wide array of masculinities that these actresses performed—from sentimental boyhood to rugged virility to gentlemanly refinement. Taking us on a guided tour through a treasure-trove of vintage images, Girls Will Be Boys helps us view the histories of gender, sexuality, and film through fresh eyes.