Date:
May 30, 2003
For more information, contact: Ellen Herman, Associate Professor,
History Department, University of Oregon, phone: (541) 346-3118;
e-mail: eherman@uoregon.edu
PUBLIC
LAUNCH FOR THE ADOPTION HISTORY PROJECT
JUNE 1, 2003
VISIT ONLINE: http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~adoption
Eugene: University of Oregon Professor Ellen Herman has created
the first web site on the history of child adoption in the United
States.
The Adoption History Project is a digital public history resource,
profiling people, organizations, topics, and studies that shaped
modern American adoption in theory and practice. Hundreds of images
and primary documents illustrate such topics as the orphan trains,
infertility, sealed records, eugenics, baby farming, telling,
and transracial, international, and special needs adoptions.
"Currently,
there is almost nothing about adoption history available on the
Internet," said Herman. "Many people with personal and
professional ties to adoption may not be aware that adoption has
a history at all. I hope the site will begin to fill this gap
and tell the fascinating story of adoption‚s past."
The web site will also interest high school and college teachers
who cover child welfare, family life, public policy, and related
issues in their history and social studies classes.
Advance
praise for The Adoption History Project
" The Adoption History Project is a brilliant technical and
scholarly accomplishment that places a vast amount of information
about adoption at the click of a mouse. Anyone,scholar or lay
person, will benefit from using it. Five stars!" -- E. Wayne
Carp, author of Family Matters: Secrecy and Disclosure in
the History of Adoption
"This
beautifully designed and thoughtfully conceived site offers a
wealth of information on adoption. In particular, its extensive
selection of documents opens up rich possibilities for classroom
use. This will become an indispensable resource for anyone wanting
to know more about the history of adoption and its intersection
with social work and psychology." -- Barbara Melosh, author
of Strangers and Kin: The American Way of Adoption
"Ellen
Herman has done an extraordinary job. Such a thoughtful, comprehensive
examination of adoption's history was long overdue. It will be
a valuable resource for anyone interested in the subject and for
every professional in the field." -- Adam Pertman, Executive
Director, Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute, author of Adoption
Nation: How the Adoption Revolution is Transforming America
The Adoption History Project is supported by the National Science
Foundation and the Center for History and New Media. Ellen Herman
is the author of The Romance of American Psychology: Political
Culture in the Age of Experts. She is currently completing
a book, "Kinship by Design," about the history of child
adoption in the twentieth-century United States.
