Date: May 30, 2003
For more information, contact: Ellen Herman, Associate Professor, History Department, University of Oregon, phone: (541) 346-3118; e-mail: eherman@uoregon.edu
PUBLIC LAUNCH FOR THE ADOPTION HISTORY PROJECT
JUNE 1, 2003
VISIT ONLINE: http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~adoption
Eugene: University of Oregon Professor Ellen Herman has created the first web site on the history of child adoption in the United States.
The Adoption History Project is a digital public history resource, profiling people, organizations, topics, and studies that shaped modern American adoption in theory and practice. Hundreds of images and primary documents illustrate such topics as the orphan trains, infertility, sealed records, eugenics, baby farming, telling, and transracial, international, and special needs adoptions.
"Currently, there is almost nothing about adoption history available on the Internet," said Herman. "Many people with personal and professional ties to adoption may not be aware that adoption has a history at all. I hope the site will begin to fill this gap and tell the fascinating story of adoption‚s past." The web site will also interest high school and college teachers who cover child welfare, family life, public policy, and related issues in their history and social studies classes.
Advance praise for The Adoption History Project
" The Adoption History Project is a brilliant technical and scholarly accomplishment that places a vast amount of information about adoption at the click of a mouse. Anyone,scholar or lay person, will benefit from using it. Five stars!" -- E. Wayne Carp, author of Family Matters: Secrecy and Disclosure in the History of Adoption
"This beautifully designed and thoughtfully conceived site offers a wealth of information on adoption. In particular, its extensive selection of documents opens up rich possibilities for classroom use. This will become an indispensable resource for anyone wanting to know more about the history of adoption and its intersection with social work and psychology." -- Barbara Melosh, author of Strangers and Kin: The American Way of Adoption
"Ellen Herman has done an extraordinary job. Such a thoughtful, comprehensive examination of adoption's history was long overdue. It will be a valuable resource for anyone interested in the subject and for every professional in the field." -- Adam Pertman, Executive Director, Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute, author of Adoption Nation: How the Adoption Revolution is Transforming America
The Adoption History Project is supported by the National Science Foundation and the Center for History and New Media. Ellen Herman is the author of The Romance of American Psychology: Political Culture in the Age of Experts. She is currently completing a book, "Kinship by Design," about the history of child adoption in the twentieth-century United States.
