NEWSLETTER

Society for the History of Children and Youth

Message from SHCY President Paula Fass

It is with great pleasure that I welcome readers to this newest edition of our newsletter and extend my personal greetings as president to members of our SHCY community.  I had the good fortune to attend the meeting of the society in Norrköpping, Sweden in June and to receive the “baton” from our wonderful past president, Kriste Lindenmeyer.

Let me first describe this “baton.”  It is a fairy’s wand in bubble gum pink with a glitter filled post and a five-pointed star at the top.  Meant to remind us of Tinkerbell’s wand in Peter Pan, the baton plays three well-known Disney songs, including “When You Wish Upon A Star.” Sometimes this happens unexpectedly.  An uncannily appropriate baton for the President of the Society for the History of Children and Youth, that immediately differentiates us from all other historians’ organizations, it was acquired by our first President Joe Hawes, who passed it on to Kriste, who passed it to me at our business meeting on June 29th.  I lived in fear of losing it so I kept it close to me on the various plane trips as I left Sweden for Poland, then the Czech Republic, Atlanta, Georgia, and finally San Francisco.  A good thing, too, since my checked luggage did not  make it to California with me.  This is the wand that I will pass to Steve Mintz in two years, and for now it is now my most valued possession. 

The meeting, organized by our Swedish contingent at Linköpping University, Bengt Sandin, Judith Lind, and Petra Andreaason, was a great success.  The sessions were thoughtfully organized, the events extremely lively and engaging, the trip to Ellen Key’s house, personally overseen by Bengt Sandin in his inimitable style, a real treat.  We had good food, good friends, and good fun. We also learned a lot about children and childhood in many places and many times.  The several sessions I attended were excellent and succeeded in crossing national boundaries.  In one of the session that I chaired, we had papers that not only compared legislation about children in twentieth century Britain and Italy, but included a paper on Mandate Palestine that discussed various Moslem, Jewish, and Druze sub-communities. Indeed, Norrköping fulfilled one of our aims of the past several years—to make the SHCY a truly international organization where historians of children and youth from all parts of the world and those who study all parts of the world feel very much at home.

As an organization, we are committed to continuing along this path into a future that will continue to expand our North American membership while also enlarging our scope to include members from many other parts of the world.  And we have changed our bylaws in order to institutionalize this direction in the constitution of our Executive Committee.  On June 29th, the membership voted to pass the following resolution regarding the Executive Committee.  (Note also the new inclusion of a graduate student member):  AT LEAST ONE MEMBER OF THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE MUST BE A GRADUATE STUDENT AT THE TIME OF ELECTION.  NO MORE THAN THREE AT LARGE MEMBERS OF THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE (NOT INCLUDING THE GRADUATE STUDENT REPRESENTATIVE) CAN RESIDE IN THE SAME COUNTRY DURING ANY TWO-YEAR PERIOD.”

This change effectively diversifies our executive committee and aims to assure that in the future, we will remain a truly international organization.  After the completion of our membership renewal drive this summer, Jim Marten will send out a slate of candidates so that we can fulfill this new mandate.   So watch your emails and be part of the process of expansion and enrichment.

Please remember to renew your subscription to the organization so you can participate in the election.  From now until September 1st, you can do so at the bargain basement rate of $40 (an additional $15 for those who have already resubscribed).  After that, SHCY membership rates will become $50.  The new rate includes a subscription to our new journal, as well as the usual benefits of being part of the most vibrant and friendly organization around and the only one that acknowledges and encourages work in the history of children, childhood and youth.   Our organization is also interdisciplinary and welcomes members actively working in this area in anthropology, sociology, art history, literature, and other associated fields who are also now moving strongly into childhood studies.  We are an organization committed to its member’s needs and interests.  We look forward to opening our future meetings a variety of new professionally-geared subjects, and expanding the range of panels to include mentoring sessions for doctoral students and recent PhDs.  Please send me suggestions about other formats that could be helpful and stimulating.

In the meantime, enjoy our new journal, which should arrive in your mailboxes in January, and remember to keep us informed about children’s history meetings you have attended or heard about as well as related matters you would like to bring to our attention.  The newsletter has not and will not disappear.  It is a vital part of our organizational life. 

We have grown and are on our way to new things, because we have been enormously fortunate in the voluntary and invaluable service of members on various committees of the organization.  I would  like to acknowledge the excellent work done by the following and to thank them for their efforts on our behalf:

Publications Committee: Laura Lovett, Michael Grossberg, James Marten, chair:  Jon Pahl;
Nomination Committee: Luke Springman, Rachel Cleves, chair: Michael Grossberg;
Best Article Prize Committee: Birgitte Soland, Heather Muno Prescott, chair:  Joe Austin;
Grace Abbott Book Prize Committee: Gary Cross, Dewar Macleod, chair: Miriam Forman-Brunell;
Conference Committee: Judith Lind, chair: Bengt Sandin, Petra Andreasson, Conference Secretatiat. 

Our excellent newsletter is overseen by Mona Gleason, Moira Hinderer, chair:  Kathleen Jones. 

I would also like to thank the staff of the Journal of the History of Children and Youth who have been working so hard to make it a reality:  Brian Bunk, Laura Lovett, Jon Pahl, Karen Sánchez-Eppler, and Martha Saxon.

I am also pleased to congratulate the winners of our two prizes announced at our meeting in Sweden:  Julia Mickenberg (University of Texas, Austin) has won the first annual book prize named in honor of Grace Abbott and endowed by Joe Hawes, for Learning from the Left: Children’s Literature, the Cold War, and Radical Politics (Oxford University Press, 2005).  Tamara Myers (University of British Columbia) won for her article,  "Embodying Delinquency: Boys' Bodies, Sexuality, and Juvenile Justice History in Early-Twentieth-Century Quebec." Journal of the History of Sexuality 14(4), October 2005: 383-414.  These are two outstanding examples of the wonderful work that is now regularly coming out in our exciting field.  

Finally, our existence depends very much on the unfailing and faithful work of Jim Marten, Secretary of SHCY, and to the untiring work of our outgoing president, Kriste Lindenmeyer.  We owe both of them our thanks and appreciation.  Kris has been an extraordinary leader, overseeing the inception of the journal, the decision to go into our first foreign venture and chosing Norrköping as the venue for our meeting.  She has been an intrepid advocate for the organization and for its members, overseeing it with great solicitude and wisdom.  She has been fundamental to our growth and, dare I say it, our maturation as a subfield of history that has an important organization supporting it.  We are truly in her debt.

Paula Fass