SHCY Bulletin

Society for the History of Children and Youth

Member News and News from the Field

  compiled by Nancy Zey (Sam Houston State University)

Member News:

Mary Niall ("Molly") Mitchell (University of New Orleans) was on an episode of “History Detectives” talking about The Couvent school for free children of color in New Orleans in the 19th century, and a manuscript that was probably a student copy book written by one of the pupils.  The segment was entitled "Creole Poems" and can be viewed online: http://video.pbs.org/video/1162509522/program/1138014438

Nathalie op de Beeck has recently started a new position as Associate Professor of English at Pacific Lutheran University.  “I'm going to be directing the program in children's literature and childhood studies, which we are in the process of naming and turning into a minor for undergraduates. There will be a strong cultural studies and history component to the minor, and I will let you know more information once I have the program up and running this fall.”

This fall, Amanda H. Littauer is starting a new position as an Assistant Professor of Women's Studies and History at Northern Illinois University.  She will teach historical and interdisciplinary courses on girls and girlhoods. 

Gail S. Murray (Rhodes College) is trying something new with her History of Childhood in America class this fall.  “The child developmental psych. prof and I required co-enrollment in our 2 courses, which will meet back-to-back in the same classroom.  We are not team-teaching, but we are co-supervising an experiential learning project in the community.  Students will work with children in the children’s program at a local community health center to gather family stories w/ photos and make a short family history book. We two instructors have selected readings for our separate courses that we hope will have the most resonance with the other course.  I’d like to end with William Koop’s essay challenging the static view of developmental psychology!  I’ll be using Huck’s Raft as my text, Jabbour’s Major Problems in the History of American Families and Children for short essays and documents, Cahn’s Sexual Reckonings, Shor’s Born to Buy, and Kozol’s Shame of the Nation and other assorted essays.”

E. Wayne Carp (Pacific Lutheran University) has been appointed to the editorial boards of Adoption Quarterly and Adoption & Culture.

Susan J. Pearson (Northwestern University) has won the Best Article Prize from SHCY for 2007-2008 for her article, "Infantile Specimens: Showing Babies in Nineteenth-Century America," which appeared in the December 2008 issue of the Journal of Social History.

Corrie Decker has started a new position in the History Department at University of California, Davis. 

Heidi Morrison has finished her PhD at UC Santa Barbara and is starting a position in September as an Assistant Professor in the History Department at the University of Wisconsin (La Crosse). She specializes in children and childhood in the modern Middle East and will be teaching a course called "The Global History of Childhood."

Congratulations to all these members!

Member Introductions

Welcome to new member Frank DiCataldo, who wishes to introduce himself to the society: “I am an assistant professor of psychology at Roger Williams University where I teach the History of Modern Psychology course which devotes an entire section to the history of various psychological discourses on child-rearing and childhood.  My research interests is the history of thought about juvenile delinquency, specifically, the juvenile reform school movement.  I am currently working on a book documenting the closing of the juvenile reform schools in Massachusetts in the early 1970s.  I have recently released a book at NYU Press entitled The Perversion of Youth, which is not primarily a historical work but does have a few chapters devoted to the history of thought about childhood sexuality.  The book may be of interest to some members who are interested in childhood sexuality. An interesting blog that some members might find interesting is Advances in the History of Psychology.  It is sponsored by York University in Toronto Canada.  They often have really interesting postings on the blog about the history of childhood.  For instance, just yesterday they had a few postings about a series of articles and radio webcasts about Harry Harlow and his research on attachment in rhesus monkeys and its effect on child-rearing practices in America.  Excellent stuff.  Here is the link: http://ahp.apps01.yorku.ca/”

Susana Sosenski wishes to introduce herself and point members to her website, which lists her articles. She studies the history of childhood in Mexico.  http://sosenski.wordpress.com/articulos/

Benjamin Roberts became a member of SCHY this year and says that he “thoroughly enjoyed” the Berkeley conference.  He is affiliated with the History Department at the Vrije Universiteit of Amsterdam (the Netherlands). A historian of childhood and youth in the early modern period, he earned his Ph.D from the University of Groningen (the Netherlands) on the dissertation “Through the Keyhole. Dutch Child-rearing Practices in the 17th and 18th Century” (Hilversum: Verloren Publishers, 1998), and is currently finishing a manuscript entitled “Becoming a Man. Masculinity and Youth Culture in the Seventeenth Century.” He has published in various journals such as the History of Family History, Journal of the History of Sexuality, and Men and Masculinities. For more information  see: http://www.bbroberts.com

New Books by Members

Hamilton Cravens (Iowa State University) reports two new publications.  ABC-Clio has just published Great Depression: Peoples and Perspectives, which he edited, and for which he did the introduction and all the reference material; two other SHCY members, Kris Lindenmeyer and Ben Keppel, contributed chapters, Kris on adolescents in the 30s, and Ben on what it was like to be an African American social scientist then.  Then, in November, Oregon State University Press is publishing Race and Science. Scientific Challenges to Racism in Modern America, Paul L. Farber and Hamilton Cravens, editors, which includes an introduction by Ham as well as an essay on race and IQ.

Lynn Sacco (University of Tennessee, Knoxville) has a new book out: Unspeakable: Father-Daughter Incest in American History. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009.  For more information, please go to: http://jhupbooks.press.jhu.edu/ecom/MasterServlet/GetItemDetailsHandler?iN=9780801893001&qty=1&viewMode=3&loggedIN=false

Miriam Forman-Brunell (University of Missouri-Kansas City) has a book just published by New York University Press -- Babysitter: An American History.

Boris Gorshko (Auburn University) has a new book out: Russia's Factory Children: State, Society, and Law, 1800-1917 (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2009).

Stefania R. Van Dyke announces a new book from Left Coast Press in November called "Connecting Kids to History with Museum Exhibitions," edited by D. Lynn McRainey and John Russick. “While its focus is more about making history accessible FOR minors rather than the history OF minors, it still may be instructive and interesting for your purpose. In fact, there are some case studies of history exhibitions that use historical children and youth to tell the stories the exhibitions are conveying. Here's a link to more information: http://www.lcoastpress.com/book.php?id=222.”

The University of North Carolina Press has published a new book by Wendy Rouse Jorae: The Children of Chinatown:  Growing Up Chinese American in San Francisco, 1850-1920. Revealing the untold stories of a pioneer generation of young Chinese Americans, this book places the children and families of early Chinatown in the middle of efforts to combat American policies of exclusion and

segregation.   Jorae challenges long-held notions of early Chinatown as a bachelor community by showing that families--and particularly children--played important roles in its daily life.  More information is available at:http://uncpress.unc.edu/browse/book_detail?title_id=1662

Articles  and  Book Chapters by Members

E. Wayne Carp (Pacific Lutheran University) has published “How Tight Was the Seal? A Reappraisal of Adoption Records in the United States, England, and New Zealand, 1851-1955," in International Advances in Adoption Research for Practice, edited by Elsbeth Neil and Gretchen Wrobel (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009).

Boris Gorshko (Auburn University) has three new articles and book chapters out: "Child Labor in Imperial Russia" in G.K. Lieten and Elise Nerveen Meerkerk, Child Labour's Global Past (Peter Lang Publishers, 2009); "History of Child Labor in Imperial Russia" in Child Labor World Atlas: a reference Encyclopedia (Hugh D. Hindman, ed. M.E. Sharp: New York, 2009); and "Teaching Modern Russian History in European and Global Context" in NewsNet: News of the American Association for the advancement of Slavic Studies, vol. 49, no. 2, March 2009.

David Macleod (Central Michigan University) has a chapter in a new edited collection: “Original Intent: Establishing the Creed and Control of Boy Scouting in the United States” in Scouting Frontiers: Youth and the Scout Movement’s First Century, ed. Nelson R. Block and Tammy M. Proctor (Newcastle upon Tyne, U.K.: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2009). It includes fourteen articles on the history of Scouting and Girl Guiding, mainly in Britain, its empire and commonwealth, and the United States. The range is quite broad, tracing the history of ways in which Scouting crossed borders of nationality, culture, religion, and gender.

Ellen Boucher (Furman University) has an article coming out in the October issue of the Journal of British Studies titled "The Limits of Potential: Race, Welfare, and the Interwar Extension of Child Emigration to Southern Rhodesia."  

Conference Presentations

Luke Springman (Bloomsburg University) delivered the paper in German, taking a new research direction from his 2007 book, Carpe Mundum: German Youth Culture of the Weimarer Republic.  The title of the paper was "Die Vermarktung des “dunklen Kontinents” im Afrikabild der Kinder- und Jugendliteratur der Weimarer Republik", translated as "Marketing the "Dark Continent" in Images of Africa in Children's Literature of the Weimar Republic". It dealt with the colonial consciousness of the time in Germany, after Germany had lost all its colonies after WWI. There was a campaign to have Germans emigrate to Africa. Almost no research exists in History or in literary studies about colonial movements of this period, even though it had a significant presence in the popular culture (and in politics).

News from the Field:

News Flash

Jeremy Trevelyan Burman (York University) reports that the American Psychological Association has cut its contribution to the funding for the Archives of the History of American Psychology from $60,000 per year to $30,000 per year (in 2009) and $20,000 per year (in 2010 and thereafter).  “This will impact all those scholars who rely on AHAP for archival materials, especially those interested in the overlap between the history of minors and the history of psychology.”  There are more details at: http://ahp.apps01.yorku.ca/?p=746

Museums / Exhibitions / Archives

Andrea Pasztor (Janus Pannonius Museum) has sent word of a school history database and virtual photo album of Pecs, Hungary: http://emu.jpm.hu/iskola/.

Marjory O'Toole (Little Compton Historical Society) announces an exhibition: Time to Play traces the history of children's play in Little Compton, RI from the 1600s to the present day with a special emphasis on 1900 to 1950.  “We have objects, stories and images on display, exhibit panels and an 80 page exhibit pamphlet with some nice memoires etc. We picked a boy and girl from each decade 1900-1950 and highlighted them in the exhibit with a display of their childhood belongings, photographs and memories.”  For more information, please go to: http://www.littlecompton.org/. a

Upcoming Events

From Shawn Casey (Ohio State University):  LiteracyStudies@OSU has announced its 2009-2010 schedule of public lectures.

October 15, 2009: Fall Lecture
David Nord, Journalism and History, Indiana University, will give a talk entitled “Tracking the Readers of Journalism: Elusive Evidence of Ephemeral Reading” that draws on research in the history of reading and readers of American journalism from the 1730s to the 1910s.  Nord's research interests lie in the history of American publishing, especially journalism history and the history of the religious press. His recent books include Faith in Reading: Religious Publishing and the Birth of Mass Media in America (Oxford University Press, 2004) and Communities of Journalism: A History of American Newspaper and Their Readers (University of Illinois Press, 2001). He has been involved for many years with the Center for the History of the Book in American Culture at the American Antiquarian Society.  http://journalism.indiana.edu/about-us/faculty-staff/bio/?person=164 

January 28, 2010 The Ohio State University Lecture in Literacy Studies
Wendy Griswold, Bergen Evans Professor in the Humanities and Professor of Sociology at Northwestern University, will present a lecture based on her new book, Regionalism and The Reading Class , and related research. Griswold’s research and teaching interests include cultural sociology; sociological approaches to literature, art and religion; regionalism, urban representations, and the culture of place; the Federal Writers’ Project; and comparative studies of reading practices. Her recent books include Bearing Witness: Readers, Writers, and the Novel in Nigeria (Princeton UP, 2000), Cultures and Societies in a Changing World 3rd ed. (Pine Forge 2008), and Regionalism and the Reading Class (University of Chicago Press, 2008). She directs the Culture and Society Workshop at the Alice Berline Kaplan Institute for the Humanities. http://www.sociology.northwestern.edu/faculty/griswold/home.htm  

May 6, 2010:  Spring Lecture 
Teresa McCarty, Alice Wiley Snell Professor of Education Policy Studies and Professor of Applied Linguistics, Arizona State University will give a talk that draws from her work in language policy, ethnography, and also new work on “biographies of language revitalization.”  An educational anthropologist, McCarty’s research and teaching focus on indigenous/language minority education, language education planning and policy, critical literacy studies, and ethnographic methods in education. Her recent books include Language, Literacy, and Power in Schooling (Erlbaum, 2005), A Place To Be Navajo: Rough Rock and the Struggle for Self-Determination in Indigenous Schooling (Erlbaum, 2002), One Voice, Many Voices - Recreating Indigenous Language Communities (with O. Zepeda, Center for Indian Education, 2006), and To Remain an Indian: Lessons in Democracy from a Century of Native American Education (with K. T. Lomawaima, Teachers College Press, 2006).