1) SHCY was founded to promote the history of children and youth.
2) The organization (a) supports research about childhood, youth cultures, and the experience of young people across diverse times and places; (b) fosters study across disciplinary and methodological boundaries; (c) provides venues for scholars to communicate with one another; and (d) promotes excellence in scholarship.
3) Membership is open to all individuals as well as to cultural and educational institutions.
4) SHCY resources for scholars include regular conferences, an email discussion list, a website, and publications.
The combined efforts of many individuals have helped SHCY to great strides toward fulfilling its mission. As of February, 2006, SHCY has 174 dues-paying members and H-Childhood has 735 subscribers located in 33 separate countries (http://www.h-net.msu.edu/~child). The list editors, Thomas Cardoza, Sarah Carter, Daniel Kline, Julie Smith, Shirlee Swain, and our book review editor, Patrick Ryan maintain an outstanding site of the Internet promoting our field. Special thanks also go to Kathleen Jones, Sean Martin, Colleen Vasconcellos, Margot Hillel, Nancy Zey, David Pomfret, Mona Gleason, and Moira Hinderer for there work preparing the outstanding SHCY newsletter. We have also had recent success through SHCY's third biennial conference, held at Marquette University last summer. These accomplishments are evidence of the excitement in the field as well as the hard work and dedication of many people involved in SHCY. Thank you to everyone who supports this young and growing organization.
But SHCY cannot sit on these laurels. Every SHCY member should start making plans to attend the next SHCY conference to be hosted by Linkšping University in Sweden in mid-summer 2007. We are grateful to Bengt Sandin for his willingness to welcome our members to his Child Studies program and we hope meeting in Europe is a new opportunity for creating stronger links in interdisciplinary scholarship as it helps SHCY build bridges over national boundaries. Housing costs will be very inexpensive and we are working to find the best means to support graduate students and young scholars wanting to attend. What better reason could you have to go to Sweden in 2007?
In preparation for our meeting in Sweden, SHCY President-elect Paula Fass and I are initiating a new membership challenge. We are asking all SHCY members to bring at least two new members to the organization. Many researchers examining topics related to children and youth do not realize SHCY exists. Others do work focused on young people, but they often do not see themselves as historians of childhood. Open their eyes! Invite them to join SHCY. Membership forms are available in this newsletter and on the H-Childhood website at: http://www.h-net.org/~child/SHCY/registration113.htm. As part of this membership drive we are anxious to continue to strengthen membership in North America and scholarship centered on the history of children and youth in the United States and Canada. However, we also want your help attracting researchers working outside North America and/or on topics looking at children and youth in other parts of the globe. Let's make SHCY a truly "global" organization and help us bring in new members from a variety of disciplinary perspectives and topics. I believe it is possible to double our membership by the Fall of 2007. Be a part of this exciting expansion by bringing at least two new members to SHCY.
Besides the conference in Sweden, SHCY is also expanding its outreach by establishing a scholarly journal. I want to personally thank Jon Pahl, Michael Grossberg, and James Marten for their efforts designing, vetting, and implementing the journal proposal. And special thanks to Laura Lovett for organizing the necessary institutional, financial, and research support. Watch your email boxes and this newsletter for further updates and begin to prepare for your university or college to subscribe. Institutional subscriptions will be key to the journal's success and SHCY's future.
One final thought. I recently participated in a very interesting inter-disciplinary workshop examining children's cultures. After a very intriguing presentation by a scholar in a non-history field, I commented that the contemporary issue he was examining had also been the focus of debate in the 1930s. He politely nodded, but later asked, "Why is it that this same debate had roots in the past?" A great question. It matters because the study of the history of children and youth can help to uncover strategies that will improve lives of children and youth living today and in the future. Asking "why?" (the favorite question of historians and of the bane of students) can lead to the discovery of patterns in the human experience that get to the root of today's problems. Such causes are often difficult to discern amid the emotion of contemporary debates. As one of the workshop members commented, children are often "the canary in the mine" alerting a society about injustice. I believe that this reason alone is evidence there is no more important area of historical investigation than the history of children and youth.
