Emporia State started the spring semester with an avant-garde class offered to students: “Barbie and Feminism.” Director of Ethnic and Gender studies Mallory Bishop and Senior Diversity Officer and Assistant Dean of the Institute of Interdisciplinary Studies Nyk Robertson co-teach the class. The class encompasses gender theory, queer theory, capitalism, race, feminism, and “camp.”

“(“Camp” is) a way of expression that is exaggerated. It’s often what they call self-acknowledging,” Bishop said. “So it’s something that’s so tacky, so ugly, so over the top that it kind of becomes cool again. And even though it wasn’t originally associated with the LGBTQ+ community or queer culture, it quickly became part of queer culture. So “camp” is old. It’s something that is several decades as kind of an idea.”

Bishop says that the inspiration for the class came after watching the film “Barbie.” She explains that together she and Robertson brainstormed ways to explain multiple theories that are also discussed in “Barbie.” 

“…We started thinking about some other topics like gender theory. Thinking about queer theory because there are several characters in the movie that are kind of portrayed as being part of the queer community or could be seen as being part of the queer community,” she said.

The class also incorporates a discussion around race.

 “Barbie does have some different representations. The movie does feature actors or Barbies of different races, but there’s still a lot of whiteness,” Bishop said. “And so that’s something that we could critique about Barbie. There weren’t any Black or Latina Barbies introduced until 1980.  So Barbie was introduced in 1959, but it took that many decades for there to be a Black Barbie.”

Other components of the class are marketing and capitalism which include Barbie’s brand, components of the Barbie organization and Mattel as a business. These discussions contribute to a comprehension of consumerism and the doll’s symbolic value as the first fashion doll.

“We’re mainly using the movie as a way to talk about these larger ideas,” she said.