NEWSLETTER

Society for the History of Children and Youth

SHCY at the AHA

Lawrence Grossberg, Indiana University

The Society for the History of Children and Youth became an affiliate organization of the American Historical Association last year.  One of the privileges of membership is the right to sponsor a panel at the AHA’s annual meeting.  SHCY sponsored its first panel at last January’s AHA meeting in New York City: “The History of Adolescence in Global Perspective.”  

As the title suggests, the SHCY panel took a global look at one of the most contentious and revealing issues in the history of children and childhood:  adolescence.  Participants did so by addressing the subject itself but also by using it to raise questions about a variety of other critical topics from gender to state building. 

The panel examined the history of adolescence by taking the audience from Russia and China to Africa and the United States.  Jude Richter, who recently received his PhD from Indiana University and now works for the Survivors Registry at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, began the session with a paper entitled:   “Defining the Juvenile Criminal in Nineteenth Century Russia.”  Karen M. Teoh, a Postdoctoral Fellow and Lecturer of Chinese history at Bowdoin College, then shifted the discussion to China and Southeast Asia with a presentation on “Modern Girl, New Woman: Female Education and Adolescence Among the Overseas Chinese of British Malaya and Singapore, 1900-1950s.”  Corrie Decker, an assistant professor in the African and African American Studies Department at Lehman College, City University of New York, presented the final paper of the session:  “Initiated Into What?  Gender and Adolescence in Zanzibar 1900-1963.”  The formal session concluded with a comment by Don Romesburg, an Assistant Professor at Sonoma State University, whose research focuses on sexuality and gender in U.S. history, childhood and adolescence, transgender studies, race and sexuality, and queer performance and popular culture.  In addition to useful comments about each presentation, Romesburg also used his remarks to raise questions about the connections between the experiences of adolescence in particular places and at particular moments and adolescence as a global phenomenon.  The ensuing spirited discussion among the panelists and with the audience addressed offered a vivid demonstration of the importance of studying about childhood, youth cultures, and the experience of young people across diverse times and places. 

The panel consequently served quite effectively as SHCY’s initial contribution as an AHA affiliate organization. 

Return to Table of Contents