News from the Field, III:  Recent Publications in the Field

Compiled by David Pomfret

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

Several works focusing on childhood and youth in the US have appeared in the last year or so. Kriste Lindenmeyer, the SHCY’s president, recently published The greatest generation grows up: American childhood in the 1930s (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2005), a study of the youth of the ‘New Deal generation’ and their experience of work, unemployment, education and popular culture.

Also dealing with the experience of schooling and working class culture is Stephen Lassonde’s recent book, Learning to Forget: Schooling and Family Life in New Haven's Working Class, 1870-1940 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005).

Karen Sánchez-Eppler’s, Dependent States: the child’s part in nineteenth-century American culture (Chicago: University of Chicago Press), also published in 2005, deals with childhood, fictions and the construction of the child’s social identity.

A resurgence of interest has been shown in the field of the history of youth and childhood in the colonial context. Recent works include Invisible hands : child labor and the state in colonial Zimbabwe by Beverly Carolease Grier (Portsmouth, NH : Heinemann, 2006), dealing with such themes as child and adolescent labour in the late nineteenth to the mid twentieth century and the construction of urban childhood during the early years of African nationalism, in the 1940s-1950s.

Also on Africa in the colonial era, two recent articles have appeared. They are, Paul Ocobock, “Joy Rides for Juveniles,”: Vagrant Youth and Colonial Control in Nairobi, Kenya, 1901-52,” Social History 2006 31 (1): 39-59 and Richard Waller, “Rebellious Youth in Colonial Africa,” Journal of African History 2006 47 (1): 77-92.

On the dominions, Cynthia R. Comacchio has published, The dominion of youth : adolescence and the making of a modern Canada, 1920-1950 (Waterloo, Ont. : Wilfrid Laurier University Press, c2006). Bianca Premo’s, Children of the Father King : youth, authority, & legal minority in colonial Lima (Chapel Hill : University of North Carolina Press) appeared in 2005, dealing with issues of child rearing and adult authority, youth and crime, reform and child slavery.

Satadru Sen’s Colonial childhoods: the juvenile periphery of India, 1850-1945 (Chicago: Anthem Press, 2005) makes up the third of these recent books on the child in the colonial context. Sen examines how through colonial institutions, childhood was reformed, gendered and ‘deracinated.’

A number of scholars have produced recent books on childhood and youth in Modern Europe, and in particular Nazi Germany and Nazi-occupied Europe.

And life is changed forever : Holocaust childhoods remembered appeared in 2006, sponsored by the Holocaust Child Survivors of Connecticut, edited by Martin Ira Glassner and Robert Krell and published by Wayne State University Press.

Nicholas H. Lynn’s, Cruel world : the children of Europe in the Nazi web (New York : A.A. Knopf) was published in 2005, and in the same year an article on youth resistance to Nazism has been published by Tom Neuhaus, “No Nazi Party: Youth Rebels of the Third Reich,” History Today 2005 55 (11): 52-57.

Relatively new work on childhood in South East Europe not previously reported in this newsletter has emerged in the form of Slobodan Naumović and Miroslav Jovanović’s edited volume on Childhood in South East Europe : historical perspectives on growing up in the 19th and 20th century (Münster: Lit ; Piscawatay, NJ, 2004).

The field of youth culture, and in particular Anglo-American popular culture in the 1960s has once again yielded new scholarship.

Reading the Beatles : cultural studies, literary criticism, and the Fab Four edited by Kenneth Womack and Todd F. Davis appeared in the catalogue of the State University of New York Press (2006).

Karen M. Staller’s, Runaways: how the sixties counterculture shaped today’s practices and policies, dealing with ‘runaway’ youth in the 1960s and 1970s has now been published by Columbia University Press (2006).

Those interested in youth and popular culture may also find Jennifer Hulbert, Kevin J. Wetmore, Jr., and Robert L. York’s, Shakespeare and youth culture (New York : Palgrave Macmillan, 2006) worth a look. This book explores the appropriation of Shakespeare in youth culture and the expropriation of youth culture in the manufacture and marketing of ‘Shakespeare’ in film, music and literature.

Modern France continues to attract scholars interested in the history youth and childhood. Alain Schaffner’s edited volume, L’ère du récit d’enfance : en France depuis 1870 (Arras : Artois presses université) was published in 2005 and another recent addition to this field is Judith Surkis’s book Sexing the citizen : morality and masculinity in France, 1870-1920 (Ithaca, N.Y. : Cornell University Press, 2006) which deals with education, family and the state, hygiene and a number of other themes.

Buford Norman’s edited work The child in French and Francophone literature appeared a little earlier, in 2004 (published by Rodopi), and may also be of interest.

Muslim youth promises to emerge as the focus of important research by historians of the contemporary period. Interest in this area has developed strongly in recent years and Colette Harris’s, Muslim youth : tensions and transitions in Tajikistan, dealing with ‘traditionalism vs modernity’ in young Muslims’ lives and other themes is a new addition to scholarship on this subject (published by Westview Press, c2006).

The profile of work on childhood and youth in the Early Modern European context remains strong and recent work to appear, notable for its emphasis upon age as a category of social experience, includes Erin Campbell’s edited volume, Growing old in early modern Europe : cultural representations (Aldershot, England ; Burlington, VT : Ashgate, c2006).

The theme of social deprivation and efforts by the state and private organisations to intervene to ameliorate the condition of children and youth afflicted by it has always been an important sub-field of the history of Childhood and Youth. New work in this area includes S.J. Kleinberg’s, Widows and orphans first : the family economy and social welfare policy, 1880-1939 (Urbana : University of Illinois Press, c2006) and Lydia Murdoch’s, Imagined orphans : poor families, child welfare, and contested citizenship in London (New Brunswick, N.J. : Rutgers University Press, c2006)

Lori Askeland’s edited volume Children and youth in adoption, orphanages, and foster care : a historical handbook and guide (Westport, Conn. : Greenwood Press, 2006) contains new scholarship on the still relatively under-researched area of adoption in the modern era.

New work on China continues to appear, with a recent addition in the form of Joseph W. Esherick, Paul G. Pickowicz, and Andrew G. Walder’s edited collection, The Chinese cultural revolution as history (Stanford, Calif. : Stanford University Press, 2006), which contains some discussion of the role of Chinese youth in this turbulent period.