News from the Field, I

compiled by Nancy Zey (University of Texas at Austin)

Member News:

Congratulations to Ilana Nash, assistant professor of English at Western Michigan University, upon the publication of her first monograph: American Sweethearts: Teenage Girls in Twentieth Century Popular Culture (Indiana University Press, 2006). The book focuses on the history of how the category "teenage girl" was created and disseminated through the narrative entertainment industries (e.g., theater, fiction, film, television) during the 20th century.

Lisa Ossian has recently accepted a new full-time teaching position in the History Department at Des Moines Area Community College in Ankeny, Iowa.

Troy Kickler, recent PhD graduate from the University of Tennessee, is the new director of the North Carolina History Project, a project of the John Locke Foundation, a non-partisan, non-profit think tank in Raleigh, North Carolina. One of his duties is editing an upcoming online encyclopedia called northcarolinahistory.org, and he hopes to include entries about minors in North Carolina.

Last fall, Rebecca de Schweinitz served as a visiting fellow at Yale's Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, & Abolition where she conducted research for a project on childhood, slavery, and the anti-slavery movement.

Emma Alexander-Mudaliar has recently been appointed an assistant professor in the History Department at the University of Winnipeg, Canada. She conducts research on children in India, particularly on child labor in the colonial period. She would be interested in hearing from those working on child labor in other contexts, on violence towards children, as well as those with an interest in juvenile offenders. Please email her at e.alexander@uwinnipeg.ca.

Double congratulations to Carolyn Cocca who has been appointed the Director of the Women's Center at the State University of New York, College at Old Westbury, and her book just won an award. The book is Jailbait: The Politics of Statutory Rape Laws in the United States (State University of New York Press, 2004), and it won one of the ALA's Outstanding Academic Titles of 2005. Taken from their website: "This year's Outstanding Academic Titles list includes 682 books and electronic resources chosen by the CHOICE staff from the 6,964 titles reviewed by CHOICE during the past year. These titles have been selected for their excellence in scholarship and presentation, the significance of their contribution to the field, and their value as important.”

Congratulations to Gail S. Murray on her appointment as Chair of the Department of History at Rhodes College.

Thomas Bergler of Huntington University was recently appointed Associate Editor of The Journal of Youth Ministry, a peer reviewed, interdisciplinary journal published by the Association of Youth Ministry Educators.  Those wishing to submit manuscripts on any aspect of the history of youth, youth ministry, or youth ministry education are encouraged to contact him at tbergler@huntington.edu or 260-359-4285.  Submission guidelines may be found at http://ayme.gospelcom.net/

In March, Meredith Eliassen will be presenting a session on the Marguerite Archer Collection of Historic Children's Materials called "'A' is for Archer" that will be about two centuries of literacy education in America at the Reading the World VIII Conference at University of San Francisco. This presentation will be made in honor of Marguerite Archer (1917-2005) who died last summer. Mrs. Archer's collecting interest was literature that documented aspects of historic child culture. To learn more about the Archer Collection go to http://www.library.sfsu.edu/special/archer.html. To learn more about the conference see http://www,soe.usfca.edu/departments/ime/rthconf/conference.html.

Shurlee Swain, associate professor of history at the University of Melbourne, and Margot Hillel, associate professor and head of the School of Arts and Sciences at Victoria Australian Catholic University, have received a three-year grant from the Australian Research Council(commencing this year) to pursue a project entitled: Child, Nation, Race and Empire: A Critical Analysis of Child Rescue Narratives in Britain, Australia and Canada 1850-1915. This innovative, inter-disciplinary, cross cultural project contributes to understandings of both contemporary child welfare practices and the complex dynamics of empire. By critically analyzing the construction and cultural transmission of nineteenth-century British child rescue ideologies it will offer a reinterpretation explain of the ways in which they shaped both popular and governmental discourses in Canada and Australia. This reframing of the debate will provide the basis of a new history which explores an explanation for both the attraction and failure of now much-condemned child removal policies and contextualize ongoing debates about the nature of children’s citizenship and the rights of those harmed by past practices.

Anthony Krupp, assistant professor of German at the University of Miami (Florida), is a winner of the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Innovative Course Design Competition. His course was entitled Philosophies of Childhood in the Eighteenth Century. Beyond the usual suspects of Locke and Rousseau, the course also examines philosophical texts by Descartes, Leibniz, and Wolff as well as a novel by Goethe. He will be honored for this award at the upcoming ASECS meeting in Montreal, and his course will then be available to the public on the ASECS website: http://asecs.press.jhu.edu/tchgpmpt.html. Feel free to contact him at krupp@miami.edu.

Kudos to Steve Gennaro, doctoral student in art history at McGill University, on the publication of a version of his M.A. thesis in the Winter 2005 edition of the International Social Science Review. The article is titled "Purchasing the Canadian Teenage Identity: ICTs, American Media, and Brand Name Consumption."

Clementine Fujimura, Professor of Language and Culture Studies at the U.S. Naval Academy, has a new book out: Russia's Abandoned Children: An Intimate Understanding (Preager, 2005). This book draws on interviews and other data to examine the lives and stigmatization of children in Russian shelters, orphanages, and streets from the perspectives of abandoned youngsters and their caretakers.

Susan Boynton, assistant professor of music at Columbia University, and Roe-Min Kok, assistant professor of music at McGill University, announce the publication of Musical Childhoods and the Cultures of Youth (Wesleyan University Press, 2006), a collection of essays about childhood and music in cross-cultural and transhistorical contexts. In a variety of historical, social, and cultural frameworks, these 10 essays address subjects as diverse as choirboys in early modern Seville, the griot culture of West Africa, and Jewish youth at summer camp. The collection sheds new light on children and youth cultures as alternately dependent upon and independent from the “grown-up” musical worlds that surround them.

Patrizia Guarnieri announces the publication of “Dall’accoglienza alla cura. La riforma sanitaria nel brefotrofio degl’Innocenti di Firenze 1890-1918” in a monographic issue of  Medicina & Storia ( IV, 7) entitled Bambini e Salute in Europa 1750-200/Children and Health in Europe 1750-2000 (Polistampa, 2004), Please refer to the following site for more information: http://www.polistampa.com/asp/sl.asp?id=3501).

Rebecca L. Berg has a new book out: The Great Depression in Literature for Youth: A Geographical Study of Families and Young Lives (Scarecrow Press, 2004). This annotated bibliography guides readers to biographies oral histories, memoirs, and recollections photograph collections fiction and nonfiction books picture books international resources and other reference sources. The Works Progress Administration (WPA) state guides are included, as well as literature about the federal theatre, arts, and music projects. A comprehensive listing of museums and state historical societies complement this reference.

Jeanine Graham of the University of Waikato reports that the forthcoming April 2006 issue of the New Zealand Journal of History will be focused on children, childhood and youth. In keeping with the interdisciplinary approach that has characterized study in the field, the contributors come from education, law, and history, and Neil Sutherland in Canada gave generously of his time to provide feedback as the articles were being developed. Colin McGeorge has written on the long path to compulsory school attendance and Logan Moss has explored the introduction of the school bus system and associated rural school consolidation. Geoffrey Troughton's article focuses on religion, churches and childhood in New Zealand in the first half of the twentieth century; and Rosemary Goodyear investigates rural and urban children's work during the same period. Sally Maclean conducted a detailed analysis of legal cases involving violence against children in the late nineteenth century; and Claire Breen has provided a comprehensive overview of the evolution of children's rights in New Zealand, setting the national experience within an international context. Jeanine Graham's editorial introduction makes a conscious effort to alert graduate students to the rich potential for more work in childhood history, and there are several links in the footnotes to SHCY Newsletters which may encourage an increase in membership from 'down under.’ Please refer to http://www.arts.auckland.ac.nz/his/nzjh/ or write Jeanine Graham at JMGRAHAM@waikato.ac.nz for more information.

Janet McShane Galley, doctorial student in history at Temple University, has two forthcoming publications: “For Shame: Accusations of Infanticide and Coroner’s Inquests into the Deaths of Legitimate Infants in Victorian Ontario” in Infanticide in the Global Perspective edited by Brigette H. Bechtold and Donna Cooper Graves (Ohio State University Press, 2006) and “‘If you lost everything you loved the most in this world’:Myths and Realities of Laurel Hill’s ‘Mother and Twins’ Monument” in Markers XXIV (2007). The first article explores how accusations of infanticide, a "woman's crime," were used to shame men for activities that transgressed community norms for appropriate masculine behavior even though the actions of the accused men had nothing to do with the deaths of their children. The latter examines and debunks some of the myths that surround a mid-nineteenth century memorial statue of a woman and two infants located in Philadelphia's Laurel Hill Cemetery, charting the history of the man who carved the statue, locating the source of his inspiration, and discussing the symbolism of the motifs that are part of the memorial.

New Member Spotlight:

New newsletter feature! If you’re a new member and would like to introduce yourself to the others, please let us know.

Welcome to Anne Lundin, Professor in the School of Library and Information Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her most recent book is Constructing the Canon of Children's Literature: Beyond Library Walls and Ivory Towers (Routledge 2004), which looks at the cultural politics of canon formation of children's classics within the competing fields of children's librarianship and academia. She is interested in reception, reading history, and print culture, especially the construction of childhood through the cultural work of children's literature. Currently, her research is related to the kindergarten movement, in particular the work of Kate Douglas Wiggin, with connections to children's literature and librarianship. Because these interests are marginal to the technological thrust of Information Studies/Science and to the theoretical realm of literary studies, she hopes that SCHY will offer a community of interest and concern in the history of childhood's continual presence. Feel free to contact Anne at alundin@wsc.edu.