The Society for the History of Children and Youth invites scholars at all levels to submit proposals for its Third Biennial Meeting to be held August 5-8, 2005 in Milwaukee. We welcome the submission of individual papers, complete sessions, workshops, and roundtables on all topics relating to the scholarship and teaching of the history of children and youth across a range of time periods and national contexts. We hope to elicit the participation of non-U.S. and U.S. scholars, who represent a broad range of disciplinary and methodological approaches. In addition to the work of historians, we are interested in scholarship in fields such as children's literature, anthropology, sociology, education, film studies, art history, medicine, psychology, legal studies, and public policy.

Children’s worlds cannot be divorced from their spatial, political, and social contexts. As historians we continue to grapple with the question that initiated this field of inquiry: What is distinct, what is common in the study of children across time and space, across nations and cultures? We have much to learn about the processes by which children have developed distinct peer cultures. How significant have adults and peers been in organizing the social worlds of children? Where are the spaces that cultures of childhood have flourished? How rigid or permeable have been the boundaries between children of different ages, races, ethnicities, classes, sexualities, bodies, and genders in different cultural contexts? Cultural and national differences have shaped both conceptions about children and their lived experiences in the world. What have been some of the national and transnational processes involved in the transmission of ideas and practices relating to children in different cultures and time periods? To what extent should normative conceptions of children’s best interests and rights inform historical scholarship?

Individual paper proposals should include a 300-word abstract; author contact information, including a paper title; postal address and e-mail address; and a one-page cv. The organizers of complete sessions should send, in a single submission, abstracts and cvs for each of the paper presenters; cvs for the session chair and commentator; and a 200-word description of the session. All submissions should include contact information for all participants. Please list audio-visual requirements, if any. The submission deadline is December 15. Please submit all proposals by email to:

Julia Grant (e-mail address provided below). For questions, you also may call 517-323-0581.

The Program Committee members of the Society for History of Children and Youth are:

• Julia Grant, chair, Michigan State University
• Kathleen Alaimo, Saint Xavier University
• Hamilton Cravens, Iowa State University
• Crista DeLuzio, Southern Methodist University
• Ilana Nash, Western Michigan State University
• Janet McShane Galley, Temple University