NEWSLETTER

Society for the History of Children and Youth

News from the Field II: Recent Publications

David Pomfret, Editor

Among recent publications the following may be of interest to scholars working in the history of childhood and youth or related fields.

Books

Marah Gubar has added to the lively field of the history of children’s literature. Written from a literary studies perspective the essays in her new book, Artful dodgers : reconceiving the golden age of children’s literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), cover topics such as the cult of the child, the controversy over child actors and the rise of children’s theatre in late nineteenth century Britain. Another recent book covering a similar period, and themes, is Ginger Frost’s Victorian Childhoods (Praeger, 2009). The book discusses ‘The Victorian Expansion of Childhood’, ‘Lost Boys and Girls’ and ‘Children and the Family,’ among other topics.

Several works focusing on childhood and youth in the US have appeared in recent years. One new offering in this category is, Children and Youth in a New Nation (New York: New York University Press, 2009), edited by James Marten. The volume includes chapters by Jim Marten on boy soldiers in the American Revolution, Vince diGirolamo on postboys in the early Republic, and Nancy Zey on schooling and health. Sarah Chinn’s, Inventing modern adolescence : the children of immigrants in turn-of-the-century America (Rutgers University Press, 2009) meanwhile examines representations of adolescence, youth culture and child labour around 1900.

On Europe, Dagmar Herzog’s edited collection, Brutality and desire : war and sexuality in Europe’s twentieth century (Palgrave: Macmillan, 2009) contains a chapter by Emma Vickers entitled, “Youth off the rails’: teenage girls and German soldiers : a case study in occupied Denmark, 1940-1945.” Lutz Sauerteig and Roger Davidson have edited a collection of essays on sex education, entitled Shaping sexual knowledge : a cultural history of sex education in twentieth century Europe (Routledge, 2009). The book features chapters by Bruno Wanrooij on “Carnal knowledge: the social politics and experience of sex education in Italy, 1940-80” and Lesley A. Hall on “Sex education, sexual rights, society and the child - In ignorance and in knowledge: Reflections on the history of sex education in Britain.” On a similar theme, Sharna Olfman has published an edited volume entitled, The sexualization of childhood (Praeger), which deals with childhood in the United States, and features chapters on society, culture and contemporary attitudes to sexual precocity and precocious sexuality.

A recent addition to the rich and extensive collection of published memoirs dealing with youthful experiences in Europe during the Second World War is Lucyna Radlo’s, Between two evils : the World War II memoir of a girl in occupied Warsaw and a Nazi labor camp (McFarland and Co., 2009).

New scholarship dealing with childhood and youth in more recent times includes Helene Guldberg’s, Reclaiming childhood : freedom and play in an age of fear (Routledge, 2009). This book includes chapters on ‘Childhood in historical perspective’ and ‘The good, the bad, and the history: a balance-sheet of modern childhood.’ The anthropologist, David F. Lancy, meanwhile, has published, The anthropology of childhood : cherubs, chattel, changelings (Cambridge University Press, 2008). Eileen Luhr’s, Witnessing suburbia : conservatives and Christian youth culture (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009) is another recent work which engages with the recent history of conservative youth cultures in the United States, from the 1960s.

New research focusing upon Early Modern Europe includes Edel Lamb’s book Performing childhood in the early modern theatre : the children’s playing companies (1599-1613) (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009).

Articles

Recent articles of note on the history of youth in interwar Europe include, Matthias Neumann, “Revolutionizing Mind and Soul? Soviet Youth and Cultural Campaigns during the New Economic Policy (1921-8),” Social History 2008 33(3): 243-267;

Ida Blom’s, “'How to have healthy children.' responses to the falling birth rate in Norway, c. 1900-1940.” Dynamis 2008 28: 151-174; and Christine Bouneau, “La Jeunesse socialiste et l'action internationale durant l'entre-deux-guerres” Mouvement Social 2008 (223): 41-53.

On European youth and politics in the post-war era, the following articles have recently been published: Louise A. Jackson, “‘The Coffee Club Menace’: Policing Youth, Leisure and Sexuality in Post-war Manchester” Cultural & Social History 2008 5(3): 289-308; Sergei Zhuk, “Religion, 'Westernization,' and youth in the 'closed city' of Soviet Ukraine, 1964-84” Russian Review 2008 67(4): 661-679; Efi Avdela, “Corrupting and uncontrollable activities': moral panic about youth in post-civil-war Greece” Journal of Contemporary History 2008 43(1): 25-44.

Recent work on youth and political extremism in Europe includes Alan McDougall, “A Duty to forget? The 'Hitler youth generation’ and the transition from Nazism to Communism in postwar East Germany, c. 1945-49.” German History 2008 26(1): 24-46. Dealing with a related subject is Catherine Plum, “The Children of Antifascism: Exploring Young Historians Clubs in the GDR,” German Politics & Society 2008 26(1): 1-28. On Italy, Andrea Mammone has published, “The Transnational Reaction to 1968: Neo-fascist Fronts and Political Cultures in France and Italy,” Contemporary European History 2008 17(2): 213-236.

A historiographical essay by Oded Heilbronner entitled “From a Culture ‘for’ Youth to a Culture ‘of’ Youth: Recent Trends in the Historiography of Western Youth Cultures” Contemporary European History 2008 17(4): 575-591 has summarised recent work in the field of youth culture.

Other, recent work on youth, this time dealing with Asian contexts includes, Justin Jacobs, “How Chinese Turkestan became Chinese: Visualizing Zhang Zhizhong's 'Tianshan Pictorial' and Xinjiang Youth Song and Dance Troupe,” Journal of Asian Studies 2008 67(2): 545-591  and Catherine Yoonah Bae, “Girl Meets Boy Meets Girl: Heterosocial Relations, Wholesome Youth, and Democracy in Postwar Japan,” Asian Studies Review 2008 32(3): 341-360.

On colonial histories of childhood articles recently published include, Amanda Barry, “‘Equal to children of european origin': educability and the civilising mission in early colonial Australia,” History Australia 2008 5(2); and David M. Pomfret “‘Child Slavery’ in French and British Far-Eastern Colonies, 1880-1945,” Past and Present 201, 1 (November 2008): 175-213.

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