News from the Field: Recent Publications

This column provides a brief introduction to the recent (mostly) English-language publications which may be of interest to scholars working on the History of Childhood and Youth.

On childhood in Europe, an edited volume is now available entitled Childhood in South East Europe : historical perspectives on growing up in the 19th and 20th century (editors Slobodan Naumovic and Miroslav Jovanovic). It is distributed in the US by Transaction Publishers. Lynn Nicholas's Cruel world : the children of Europe in the Nazi web (Knopff) addresses Nazi ethnic and racial policies by studying the impact of these policies upon children both in Germany and elsewhere in Europe. Troy Boone's Youth of darkest England : working-class children at the heart of Victorian empire (Routledge) addresses representations of English working class children and the responses of these children to efforts to impress upon them nationalist and imperialist values.

On childhood in China, A tender voyage : children and childhood in late imperial China by Hsiung Ping Chen has been published this year (Stanford University Press).

Pamela Riney-Kehrberg's, Childhood on the farm : work, play, and coming of age in the Midwest (University of Kansas Press) deals with farm children from the early post--Civil War period through the Progressive Era. Memoirs and other forms of personal testimony continue to be published, providing rich detail on experiences of childhood and youth in various historical contexts. Noteworthy is Ohio volunteer : the childhood & Civil War memoirs of Captain John Calvin Hartzell, edited by the late Charles I. Switzer (published by Ohio University Press).

On youth in the European context, this year saw the appearance of a volume of nine essays entitled European Cities, Youth and the Public Sphere in the Twentieth Century (Ashgate) edited by Axel Schildt and Detlef Siegfried. The volume has a broadly European focus and investigates tensions and problems emerging from the myriad ways in which city government, youth and public space met in the twentieth century. The essays deal with a range of topics and case studies, from rural immigrant youth in nineteenth century Germany to hooligans in 1950s Hungary.

Staying with Europe, there have been several new additions to the emerging literature on youth in postwar Europe. Amongst them are Mark Edward Ruff's The wayward flock : Catholic youth in postwar West Germany, 1945-1965 (published by University of North Carolina Press). This includes chapters on youth in Cologne, the Rhineland, and issues such as the relationship between catholicism, youth and commercial culture. Gaetano Quagliariello has produced an edited volume of essays on the subject of Ôthe politics of youth in Italy' (La politica dei giovani in Italia : 1945- 1968) (LUISS University Press). Another new book, though not with an academic press, which takes on a sixties phenomenon (purportedly from a cultural history perspective) may be of interest. The book is Steven D. Stark's Meet the Beatles : a cultural history of the band that shook youth, gender, and the world (Harper).

New arrivals dealing with youth in the US context are Rodney Hessinger's Seduced, abandoned, and reborn : visions of youth in middle-class America, 1780-1850 (University of Pennsylvania Press) and Peter S. Carmichael, The last generation : young Virginians in peace, war, and reunion (University of North Carolina Press).

For those interested in contemporary history and studies of youth from a popular history perspective Tara Brabazon's work, From revolution to revelation : Generation X, popular memory, and cultural studies, published with Ashgate, may be of interest.

If readers have suggestions relating to conferences which they attended, calls for papers, or new publications that they might like to see included in this column of the bulletin please contact me at pomfretd@hkucc.hku.hk.