NEWSLETTER
Society for the History of Children and Youth
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No. 13 |
Winter 2009 |
News from the Field I: News from Members
compiled by Nancy Zey, Sam Houston State University
Member News
Linda Gordon (New York
University) has a biography coming out about photographer Dorothea Lange in
October 2009. Already published is a book she edited: Impounded,
a collection of Lange's photographs of the Japanese American internment. This book is now available is in
paperback.
In January 2008, Afua
Twum-Danso completed her PhD thesis from the University of Birmingham, UK,
which is entitled “Searching for a Middleground in Children’s Rights: the
Implementation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child in Ghana.” The aim of the thesis was to move beyond
the binary debate relating to the universality and relativity of children’s
rights and engage with children’s local realities, which illustrate that there
is, indeed, a middle ground in which people live their lives that may
facilitate dialogue on children’s rights with local communities. Following on from this, in September
2008 she took up a new post as lecturer in the Sociology of Childhood at the
University of Sheffield in the UK where she is part of the course team for a
new MA in International Childhood Studies.
Brianne Grant will be
completing an MA in Children's literature at the University of British Columbia
with a thesis on the history of education in Aboriginal young adult fiction
this April. She currently serves as the Executive Councillor West for the
International Board on Books for Young People in Canada.
James Marten (Marquette
University) began a four-year term as president of the Society of Civil War
Historians in November. And in
March he will deliver the annual Charles Summersell Lecture at the University
of Alabama.
Don
Romesburg is currently serving as Acting Chair of Women's and Gender
Studies at Sonoma State University. His most recent publication is “The Tightrope of Normalcy:
Homosexuality, Developmental Citizenship, and American Adolescence,” Special
issue on Youth and Sexuality in Historical Sociology (Winter 2008).
From Agnes
Haigh-Widder (Michigan State University): “This semester I am
offering a one credit freshman seminar ‘Exploring the History of Childhood.’
It meets once a week and uses history of childhood as a way to teach how to use
our Library system. Unlike the more typical ‘one-shot lecture’ in which
the librarian presents to a class about how to do whatever research in the
library is required for the professor's particular assignment, this seminar
allows us 14 weeks of one hour lectures. The students will write
annotations for materials on the history of childhood, two per week, and keep a
diary noting the effectiveness and problems of my presentations. Along
the way, they will learn to use our Library very well, which I trust will be an
asset in their other college courses.”
Joanna
B. Michlic announces that on February 2, 2009 she began a new job as
Director Project on Families, Children and the Holocaust Hadassah-Brandeis
Institute.
Congratulations to members on all their great
accomplishments!
Member
Introductions
To help foster research and professional
connections, the SHCY invites members new and longstanding to introduce
themselves.
Christopher Carlsmith of
University of Massachusetts-Lowell's History Dept. is continuing his research
on the history of student residential colleges in early modern Italian
universities ca. 1500-1750. He will be doing archival research in Bologna
in Spring 2009, and will be in residence as a Fellow at Villa I Tatti,
Harvard's Center for Italian Renaissance Studies in Florence in 2009-10.
From new member Lori
Rotskoff: “My field is American cultural history, and 20th century women's /gender and family history in the U.S. I have taught at Yale and Sarah
Lawrence College, and I currently teach at the Barnard Center for Research on
Women. I am the author of ‘Love on the Rocks: Men, Women, and Alcohol in Post-World War II America’ (Univ.
of North Carolina Press, 2002). My
current book project is titled ‘Equal Play: Feminism, Motherhood, and the Culture of Childhood in
America,’ focusing on the 1960s through the 1980s.”
Another new member is Susan Boynton, who is Associate Professor of Historical Musicology
at Columbia University. She has
co-edited two books on music, children, and youth: Musical Childhoods and
the Cultures of Youth with Roe-Min Kok (Wesleyan University Press, 2006)
and Young Choristers, 650-1700 with Eric Rice (Boydell and Brewer,
2008). She has also published
several articles on child singers in medieval monasteries.
From new member Wade
Pickren (Ryerson University): “My
work is mostly in post WWII history of psychology, with special emphases on
culture, indigenous psychologies, and immigration. I have also done a bit of
work on the impact of philanthropic foundations on the field of child development.
There are several points of contact between my interests and the Society and I
hope to be able to both contribute and receive from the scholarship of the
Society's members. I am also
President-elect of the Society for the History of Psychology (term is 2010) and
am incoming editor for the Society's journal, History of Psychology (term is
2010-2015). I look forward to
being a part of the society.”
From new member Cornelia Lambert: “I have only this year joined the Society despite
several years studying the history of childhood, child care, and education.
I am expected to graduate with my PhD in the History of Science from the
University of Oklahoma this May. My dissertation concerns the school at
Robert Owen's New Lanark community (Scotland, 1800-1828), and especially the
political significance of dance education. My other interests are the
history of infant care, the family, and the social sciences in general.”
Books by
Members
Julie Faith Parker (Yale
University) sends word about a new book. The Child in the Bible was
just published this past November to acclaimed reviews (ed. Marcia Bunge; Grand
Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008).
Annette Stott (University
of Denver) has a new book out, which has a section on children's memorials: Pioneer
Cemeteries: Sculpture Gardens of the Old West. Lincoln: University of
Nebraska Press, 2008. (See
especially pp.126-136 and many other examples scattered throughout.)
Miroslave
Chavez-Garcia has a chapter in the expanded and 40th Anniversary Edition
of The Child Savers: The Invention of
Delinquency, by Anthony M. Platt, which will appear in the fall of
2009. Reissued by Rutgers
University Press, The Child Savers includes five new essays. The book opens with an introductory essay, "In
Retrospect: Anthony Platt's The Child Savers: The Invention of
Delinquency," by Miroslava Chavez-Garcia (UC Davis) and closes with four
articles: "The Child Savers Reconsidered" by Anthony Platt (CSUS,
Emeritus); "The Child Savers and Three Cycles of Juvenile Justice Reform
in Twentieth-Century America" by William (Bill) Bush (Texas A&M);
"Women and Kids in the Court: Feminist History and Anthony Platt’s The
Child Savers" by Tamara Myers (UBC); and "The 'Other' Child Savers:
Racial Politics of the Parental State," by Geoff Ward (UC Irvine).
Ellen
Herman (University of Oregon) has a new book
out. The title is Kinship by Design: A History of Adoption in
the Modern United States. It was published by the University of Chicago
Press in both paper and cloth editions on December 1, 2008. Beginning in
the early 1900s, when children were still transferred between households by a
variety of unregulated private arrangements, Herman details efforts by the U.S.
Children’s Bureau and the Child Welfare League of America to establish adoption
standards in law and practice. She
goes on to trace Americans’ shifting ideas about matching children with
physically or intellectually similar parents, revealing how research in
developmental science and technology shaped adoption as it navigated the
nature-nurture debate. Concluding
with an insightful analysis of the revolution that ushered in special needs,
transracial, and international adoptions, Kinship by Design ultimately
situates the practice as both a different way to make a family and a universal
story about love, loss, identity, and belonging. In doing so, this volume
provides a new vantage point from which to view twentieth-century America,
revealing as much about social welfare, statecraft, and science as it does
about childhood, family, and private life.
David
Lancy (Utah State University) announces the recent publication by Cambridge of his
book The Anthropology of Childhood:
Cherubs, Chattel, Changelings.
Anthony Krupp sends word
of his recent publication: Reason's Children: Childhood in Early Modern
Philosophy (Bucknell UP, forthcoming Feb 09)
Jon
Pahl (Lutheran Theological Seminary) has just edited the memoirs of his father's
best friend under the title An American
Teacher: Coming of Age, and Coming
Out--The Memoirs of Loretta Coller. This book documents the life, loves, and murder of a lesbian in
twentieth-century America. In
poignant and powerful vignettes, Southern California educator Loretta Coller
(b. 1931) illumines her struggles to gain a successful livelihood, and to find
peace with a life-partner she loses too soon to cancer. In the process, Coller
shares lessons learned about coping with the silences so often imposed upon
gays and lesbians. Pahl suggests
the title for courses in queer studies, youth studies, and American social history.
Articles
Annette Stott (University
of Denver) has a recent publication studying children's gravestones as an
aspect of childhood material culture: “The Baby in a Half Shell: A Case Study
in Child Memorial Art of the Late Nineteenth Century.” Nineteenth-Century
Art Worldwide: A Journal of Nineteenth-Century Visual Culture. 7:2 (Autumn
2008) http://www.19thc-artworldwide.org.
Robin Veder (Penn State Harrisburg) has a
new article out about Pestalozzian education and the contemporary children's
book The Dinosaurs of Waterhouse Hawkins by Caldecott winner Brian
Selznick. Here's the citation:
Veder, Robin. “Pestalozzi and the Picturebook: Visual Pedagogy in The
Dinosaurs of Waterhouse Hawkins.” Visual Resources: An International
Journal of Documentation 24 (Dec. 2008): 369 - 390.
Museums / Exhibitions
Pinar Ozyurek (University of Chicago) sends word about an exhibit
in the Newberry Library in Chicago
about children's artifacts. Although the exhibit has ended, members may find more information at the
following link: http://www.newberry.org/exhibits/ChildrenBook.html
Websightings
Willem van Vliet sends word about the Children, Youth and Environments Center at the University of Colorado,
which now offers free access to news on children, youth and the environments
from around the world. Recent items cover play space standards, mobile phone
usage and health, toxic air, a child development index, learning environments,
and downtown planning for families with children. New items are regularly
added. You may also send news to
the Editor, Dr. Sudeshna Chatterjee < chattes@colorado.edu mailto:chattes%40colorado.edu. Go
to: http://feeds.feedburner.com/cye You can use the RSS feed to be alerted
when new items are posted. Subscription is free and can be discontinued any
time. We hope that you will find
this news service useful and welcome your feedback.
Film / Documentaries
From Elizabeth
Stanley of Bullfrog Films: Three new DVD titles from Bullfrog Films may be of interest to your
readers. All include public performance rights for use in the classroom:
1. Educating Yaprak (Life 4 Series) (2005, 26 minutes,
DVD) Turkey's ambitious campaign to reduce poverty includes convincing
reluctant parents to send their daughters to school.
http://www.bullfrogfilms.com/catalog/l4edu.html
2. Listen to the Kids! (Life 4 Series) (2005, 25 minutes,
DVD) One in five of the world's population is aged between 12 and 18. In
developing countries, where the percentage is much higher, children and young
people often carry a huge burden of responsibility yet rarely are their views
taken into account. This Life Series program reports on a UNICEF initiative to
involve children in decisions that affect their own futures, their families and
communities.
http://www.bullfrogfilms.com/catalog/l4list.html
3. Returning Dreams (Life
4 Series) (2005, 23 minutes, DVD)
In the aftermath of Liberia's civil war children are fighting to reclaim their
futures and return home.
http://www.bullfrogfilms.com/catalog/l4rd.html
Word of New Opportunity
Julie Faith Parker (Yale
University) sends the following news: The Annual Meeting in Boston last November of The Society of Biblical Literature included a new section devoted to “Children in the Biblical World.” Two sessions were held, one discussing
recent works in the field and another discussing the “Language, Law, and
Literature” related to children in the biblical text. Over a hundred people came to the combined sessions and
discussion was lively.
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