News from the Field

Compiled by Nancy Zey and David Pomfret

News from SHCY Members

SHCY is proud to sponsor the online publication of Children and Youth in America: A Documentary History (Harvard University Press, 1973).  This seminal work was edited by Robert H. Bremner with associate editors John Barnard, Tamara Hareven, Robert Mennel. The online version is still a work-in-progress, but the beta version of Volume I is now available for use at:  http://www.h-net.org/~child/Bremner/TOC.htm

Kudos to Kriste Lindenmeyer for her appointment as the Fulbright Senior Scholar at Martin-Luther-Universitþt Halle Wittenberg (Germany) during the last academic year. There she taught courses on American history in the university's Institute for British and American Studies. She is now back at UMBC where she is chair of the History Department. Her new book, The Greatest Generation Grows Up: American Childhood in the 1930s will be published by Ivan R. Dee in November, 2005.  More information at http://www.ivanrdee.com/

Congrats to Jackie Wolf, Associate Professor in the Departments of Social Medicine and History at Ohio University. She received a two-year publication grant from the National Library of Medicine to complete her second book, tentatively titled "Birth Pangs: A Social History of Obstetric Anesthesia."

David Wolcott announces that his book, Cops & Kids: Policing Juvenile Delinquency in Urban America, 1890-1940, will be released by Ohio State University Press in September 2005.  Further information may be seen at http://www.ohiostatepress.org/Books/Book%20Pages/Wolcott%20Cops.html

From Laura Lovett,  "I have a journal article on the history of child health and nutrition (or, why Popeye eats spinach) coming out in the Journal of Health Policy, Politics and the Law in October. Written primarily for health policymakers, "The Popeye Principle: Selling Child Health in the First Nutrition Crisis" appears in a special issue on the Obesity epidemic and, argues that current policymakers need to know more about the history of child health education to begin to assess current approaches to the issue. For example, not only was Popeye's  spinach consumption a direct result of an effort to popularize vitamin consumption in light of their discovery in 1911 by popular media, but so, too, were the introduction of child height and weight charts into school programs and the  notion of a "normal" weight and diet."

Amy Ogata, Associate Professor at the Bard Graduate Center for Studies in the Decorative Arts in New York, has a new article out, entitled "Creative Playthings: Educational Toys and Postwar American Culture."  Look for it in the most recent issue of Winterthur Portfolio: A Journal of American Material Culture.

Gail S. Murray has a new title and position at Rhodes College.  Address her as Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of History!

And Emily D. Cahan, too, has a new title.  She has been appointed Chair of the Department of Human Development at Wheelock College.  Last year Emily was elected to the to the Review/Executive Committee of Cheiron.

Andrea Tanner is creating a database of the in-patients at Great Ormond Street Hospital during 1852-1914. So far 51,000 children have been entered, and there are plans to have the pre-1900 data cleaned, standardized, and validated by Spring 2006 so that the database can be interrogated on the hospital website. This project should prove an invaluable source of information on the health of poor urban children in Victorian London.

Congratulations to Stephen Lassonde, whose book, Learning to Forget: Schooling and Family Life in New Haven's Working Class, 1870-1940 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005), appeared in May.

Congratulations, also, to Pamela Riney-Kehrberg, Associate Professor of History and Director of Agricultural History and Rural Studies at Iowa State University, upon the publication of her new book, Childhood on the Farm:  Work, Play, and Coming of Age in the Midwest. Please refer to http://www.kansaspress.ku.edu/rinchi.html for more information.

Miriam Forman-Brunell reports that her book, The Babysitter: A History, is under contract with New York University Press and will be published next year.

Peter Holloran of Worcester State College announces the 2005 Northeast Popular Culture/American Culture annual book award has been awarded to Jane Lancaster for Making Time: Lillian Moller Gilbreth, A Life Beyond "Cheaper by the Dozen" as an outstanding contribution and model of original scholarship.

Rick Jobs has organized a panel entitled 'The Rights of Youth and Modern French History' to be chaired by Professor John Gillis at the Social Science History Association conference. The conference will be held in Portland, Oregon from 3-6 November 2005. For more details please see http://www.ssha.org