Kathleen W. Jones, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Director of Graduate Studies

Department of History,
Virginia Tech
Blacksburg, VA 24061-0117

email: kjwj@vt.edu
Office: 421 Major Williams Hall
phone: 540-231-8371

Editor, Society for the History of Children and Youth, "Newsletter."


Research Interests

History of Psychology and Psychiatry & History of Childhood

Taming the Troublesome Child: American Families, Child Guidance, and the Limits of Psychiatric Authority (Harvard University Press, 1999; paperback edition, 2002) examines the development, in the first half of the twentieth century, of a psychiatric explanation of juvenile misbehavior. The study, based on research in the records of the Judge Baker Children's Center of Boston, looks at the professionals who created child guidance, the parents who sought psychiatric assistance with the trials of childrearing, and the children who were the objects of therapeutic intervention.

I am now working on a social and medical history of youth suicide 1870 to the present.

Women's History

A portion of Taming the Troublesome Child has been published as "'Mother Made Me Do It': Mother-Blaming and the Women of Child Guidance," in Bad Mothers: the Politics of Blame in 20th Century America, Molly Ladd-Taylor and Lauri Umansky, eds. (New York University Press, 1998).

Other Recent Publications

"United States History Online" (Digital supplement for the U.S. History survey course), with Mark V. Barrow, Jr., Marian Mollin, and Daniel B. Thorp (Houghton-Mifflin, forthcoming).

"Education for Children with Mental Retardation: Parent Activism, Public Policy, and Family Ideology in the 1950s," in Mental Retardation in America: A Historical Reader, Steven Noll and James W. Trent, Jr., eds. (New York University Press, 2004).

"Teaching History of Medicine in Cyberspace," Bulletin of the History of Medicine 72 (1998): 734-743


Courses I Teach

Undergraduate

Murder in America (Senior Seminar, Sociocultural Topics) (Fall 2000; Fall 2004)

U.S. History since 1865 (an on-line, password-protected course) (Summer 1999; Spring 2001)

Health, Disease, and Medicine (Spring 1999; Fall 2001)

Graduate

Historical Methods (Fall 2003)

US since 1920: Digital History Research Seminar (Fall 2002)

Murder in America (Research Seminar, cross-referenced with Science andTechnology Studies, Fall 2000)

Feminist Issues in the History of Medicine
(cross-referenced with the Science and Technology Studies Program,
Fall 1999)

US since 1877 (Spring 2002; Spring 2003, Fall 2004)

Treating Disease: Science, Technology, and the History of Modern Medicine (cross-listed with the Science Studies Program, Fall 1998)


PAGE LAST UPDATED March, 2005