About This Event
Join us at the Cleveland History Center to welcome the Dolls of Our Lives podcast co-host and author, Mary Mahoney. Patty Edmonson, our Curator of Costume and Textiles will speak with Mahoney about her book and the nostalgia of American Girl dolls. Afterwards, guests may purchase Mary’s book, have it signed, and join Patty and Mary for a tour of the exhibition, All Dolled Up.
October 19, 2024, 2-4pm
Free with admission; registration required
Mary Mahoney is a historian, podcaster, writer, and cultural critic. She is most at home in moments when she can think with history about pop culture. Specifically, she loves thinking about the stories we tell about ourselves and the meanings behind our pop culture attachments. You can follow Mary’s weekly writing on pop culture and history in her newsletter, Landline. She is a co-host of the Dolls of our Lives podcast which revisits the American Girls series, book by book. This show, which has been featured in The New York Times , A.V. Club, Book Riot, The Paris Review, and other outlets, investigates the historical stories offered by the brand for what they reveal about the eras in which they’re set and the decades that produced them (the 1980s/1990s).
In 2023, she released Dolls of Our Lives: Why We Can’t Quit American Girl. Combining history, travelogue, and memoir, Dolls of Our Lives follows Allison Horrocks and Mary Mahoney on an unforgettable journey to the past as they delve into the origins of this iconic brand.
When not writing or diving deep into some pop culture rabbit hole, Mary can otherwise be found exploring any house museum, watching all available reality tv shows, and chasing down new cereals and sneakers. She lives in Connecticut with her wife.
Where It's Happening
Meet the Organizer
The Cleveland History Center (CHC) headquarters for Western Reserve Historical Society, houses exhibits that tell the story of Northeast Ohio through items, documents and artifacts from a variety of collections. Through the use of its vast and varied collections in the areas of family history, community history, entrepreneurship, and technological innovation, Cleveland History Center provides the public with a much-needed sense of place in today’s mobile society, and a base for learning about invention and ingenuity that can be transferred into modern economic expansion.
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