Lecture by Iris Schäfer (Goethe University Frankfurt) as part of the lecture series "Unruly Hair – From Disobedience to Agency. Transdisciplinary Perspectives on Children's Media".

Location: Technical University of Darmstadt, room: S101/A4, Karolinenplatz 5, 64289 Darmstadt
Online participation via Zoom: LINK
Language: German
 

Abstract:
In some contemporary picture books from Italy, Japan, Germany and Spain, children’s hair is linked to forest imagery. This draws on the cultural and historical proximity between the semantics of plants and humans, or trees and hair, as noted, for example, in the Deutsche Grammatik by the Brothers Grimm. Another common feature of these depictions is the semanticisation of a child’s hair as a habitat, as these ‘hairy forests’ serve as a habitat for all manner of woodland animals – primarily birds. The parasitic symbiosis with the child’s bodily space described above is situated in surreal spheres and primarily serves as a compensatory strategy that bears witness to adult ideals of childhood. In this lecture, I will examine this variant of narrated and visually depicted hairy habitats from a comparative, discourse-analytical and spatial-theoretical perspective.

About the lecture series: 

From dust-free shoes to a neatly combed head, the “well-groomed” child becomes the focal point of discursive negotiations surrounding contemporary ideals of hygiene education and virtue. Unruly (children’s) hair, on the other hand, reflects a tension between praiseworthy cleanliness and reprehensible vanity, a tension that is culturally, historically, and regionally coded. In contemporary art and literature, unruly hair can be portrayed as a symbol of self-empowerment, but also of exclusion. These depictions continue to reflect social taboos, particularly when (female) body hair is addressed. When unruly hair is portrayed as untamed, diverse, and independent, viewers are invited to rethink beauty: as something that is linked to diversity, texture, and resistance itself. In this lecture series, national and international experts will shed light on the multifaceted aesthetics and semantics of (children’s and adolescents’) hair as depicted in stories and artistic imagery from the perspectives of cultural studies and literary studies.

Participants are expected to productively and critically engage with the subject matter and to be willing to actively participate in the discussions.

The lecture series will take place during the 2026/27 winter semester and is open to students from all disciplines at TU Darmstadt, Goethe University Frankfurt, and Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, as well as to the interested public. 

The lecture series is part of the Strategic Alliance of the Rhine-Main Universities (RMU) and is funded by the RMU Teaching Funding for Teaching.