Recent Publications

Compiled by David Pomfret

Among recent publications on the History of Childhood and Youth, Peter Stearns has brought a global perspective to bear upon childhood in Childhood in World History (New York: Routledge, 2006).

David R. Ambaras's book, Bad Youth: Juvenile Delinquency and the Politics of Everyday Life in Modern Japan, is another contribution to the growing literature to the underdeveloped field of the history of young people in East Asia. Ambaras's study focuses on Japanese youth in the twentieth century. It sets this in context with a chapter on the early modern period and the book focuses on government policy toward "problem" youth. 

On the medieval and early modern period, several works have appeared recently. Marina Baldassarri has published a book entitled Bande Giovanili e "vizio nefando': Violenza e sessualita nella Roma barocca (Rome: Viella, 2005). It is a study of youth and sexual customs, particularly "deviancy', in seventeenth century Rome. Odd Magne Bakke's When Children become People: The Birth of Childhood in Early Christianity (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2005) examines the idea of childhood in the doctrines of the early church (before 1500). In his recent book, Childhood in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance: The Results of a Paradigm Shift in the History of Mentality (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2005), Albrecht Classen revisits the issue of parent child relations during the medieval period, an issue which received considerable attention in the early years of the development of the History of Childhood and Youth as a field. Focusing on Britain, Nigel Parton has produced a new volume, Safeguarding Childhood: Early Intervention and Surveillance in a Late Modern Society (New York: Palgrave, 2006).    

Autobiographical accounts and memoirs as usual form a significant element of recent publications on youth and childhood. Among the texts to appear in this area are Denis Cassidy, The Way Things Were: A Backstreet Boyhood (Stroud: Sutton, 2005) which provides an insight into social and economic conditions of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, UK, between 1933 and 1952.

Accounts of the experience of war in childhood have continued to appear regularly. Toyin Falola's, A Mouth Sweeter than Salt: An African Memoir (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2004) provides an account of childhood and youth in Nigeria in the 1960s. Farida Huq's, Journey through 1971: My Story (Dhaka: Academic Press, 2004) examines the author's youthful experiences in Bangladesh and Pakistan, and includes an account of the Bangladeshi liberation war. Luisa Lang Owen's Casualty of War: A Childhood Remembered (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2003) is an account of the author's experience of being a German in the Danube Valley at the end of the Second World War and of her eventual emigration to America. Accounts of youth in Nazi Germany have burgeoned during the last few years, and Hubert Meyer's The 12^th SS: The History of the Hitler Youth Panzer Division (Mechanicsburg: Stackpole, 2005) has now been translated from the German. Ella Hilton's Displaced Person: A Girl's Life in Russia, Germany and America (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University, 2004) gives an account of the author (a Russian German) and her movement between refugee camps during the Second World War. Alain Shaffner's edited volume, L'Ere du rŽcit d'enfance en France depuis 1870 focuses on biographical writings in the history of French literature from the late nineteenth century.

On the Cold War era, Gareth Dale's Popular Protest in East Germany, 1945-1989 (London: Routledge, 2005) includes a chapter on "Emigration and Youth Rebellion' in the GDR.

Adding to the ever growing literature on the youth "revolution' in the 1960s, but linking this to changing social conditions in the US into the late twentieth century, is Robert V. Daniels' The Fourth Revolution: Transformations in American Society from the Sixties to the Present (New York: Routledge, 2005).

Congratulations to the SHCY's James Marten, who recently published Childhood and Child Welfare in the Progressive Era: A Brief History with Documents (Boston: Bedford, 2005). In Spirits of Defiance: National Prohibition and Jazz Age Literature, 1920-1933 (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2005) Kathleen M. Drowne addresses the topic of youth and drinking culture in America. Her chapter "These Wild Young People" may be of interest to readers. S.J. Kleinberg's Widows and Orphans First: The Family Economy and Social Welfare Policy, 1880-1939 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2006) offers an analysis of the "cult of true childhood' in America during the New Deal era.

A recent contribution to the popular culture studies discussion of childhood in the late 20^th and early 21^st century is Childhood Lost: How American Culture is Failing our Kids (Westport: Praeger). The volume is a collection of essays edited by Sharna Olfman and includes discussions of childhood and technology, sexualisation, media and parenting.

Recent articles include Moira J. Maguire and Seamus ÓCinnéide's, "A Good Beating Never Hurt Anyone": The Punishment and Abuse of Children in Twentieth Century Ireland," Journal of Social History 38, 3 (2005): 635-652.

Ning De Conick-Smith has published, "The Panopticon of Childhood": Harold E. Jones Child Study Center, Berkeley, California, 1946-1960," Paedogogica Historica 41, 4-5 (2004): 495-506.

On sport and young people, Pascale Garnier offers us a comparative study of the development of sports activities for the young in France, "Le Développement des pratiques sportives des plus jeunes: Elements pour une histoire comparative en France" Sport History Review 36, 1 (2005): 3-20.

Demographic history of childhood is the focus of Frans von Poppel, Marianne Jonker and Kees Mandemakers' "Differential Infant and Child Mortality in three Dutch Regions, 1812-1909," Economic History Review 58, 2 (2005):272-309.

In "National History and Domestic Spaces: Secret Lives of Girls and Women in 1950s South Korea in O Chong Hui's The Garden of Childhood and The Chinese Street" appeared in the Journal of Korean Studies 9, 1 (2004): 61-95.

On youth, historians have now begun to analyse subcultural forms commented upon by sociologists for a generation. Examples of recent work include, Timothy Brown's "Subcultures, Pop Music and Politics: Skinheads and "Nazi Rock' in England and Germany" Journal of Social History 38, 1 (2004): 157-178.

Michelle Langfield has analysed young people and migration in "Voluntarism, Salvation and Rescue: British Juvenile Migration to Australia and Canada, 1890-1939" Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 32, 2 (2004): 86-114.

Send news of new publications to David Pomfret at pomfretd@hkucc.hku.hk

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