Lecture by Kiera Vaclavik (Queen Mary University London) 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: English
 

Abstract:
From the Little Prince and Tintin to Charlie Brown, Harry Potter and the Wimpy Kid, closely cropped hair has become the go-to for boy heroes. But it wasn’t always thus. There was of course Struwwelpeter (1845), whose iconicity has rather undermined any intended deterrent effect against the hirsute. Later, luxuriant locks were a key feature of Burnett’s Little Lord Fauntleroy (1885) across media. Burroughs’ much less urbane Tarzan of the Apes (1912) also wears his black hair long, a fringe – cut with his hunting knife – keeping it out of his eyes. Drawing on scholarship from fashion, age, queer studies, and the health humanities, this lecture will examine what links (and divides) this unlikely trio of longhaired boys and how ideologies related to nostalgia, exoticism and combat shape their presentation. We will seek to understand why, in children’s literature and media, abundance has remained so rare, even in periods where fashion has favoured longer hair for boys and men alike.

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.