Short Description (Beschreibung):
In the last decades the ‘history of childhood’ turned into a prominent research field, allowing us to cast a glance on children’s diverse experiences in the past. Comparing in this seminar developments in Eastern and Western Europe, this seminar will focus on how moments of historical change in the 19th and 20th century altered children’s everyday lives. We look in particular at marginal childhoods, namely the lives of children who suffered from poverty and social marginalization. By taking a closer look at issues of gender, ethnicity, and class, we will follow how they resulted in children's and parents’ social in- and exclusion across time and place. During the course we examine how different political regimes (empires, nation states, socialist bloc) produced different child welfare systems and how the (non-)employment and care work obligations of parents strongly affected children's lives. We will furthermore look at how different public and state agencies, such as kindergartens and child protection institutions aimed to shape and regulate parents’ and children's lives, and how the appeal of childhood was used to implement child welfare systems as well as trigger humanitarian child relief. During this course students will gain a practical insight into the Anglo-American style of graduate seminars and will practice and expand their English reading, writing and presentation skills. Students will also learn to apply critical analysis to the material covered in the course and demonstrate their ability to make arguments with appropriate support and analysis in their written work.
Introductory Literature (Literatur zur Einführung):
Philippe Ariès: Centuries of Childhood. (New York: Vintage Books, 1962). Elisabeth Foyster and James Marten: A Cultural History of Childhood and Family. (Oxford: Berg Publishers, 2010). Lisa A. Kirschenbaum: Small Comrades: Revolutionizing Childhood in Soviet Russia, 1917-1932. (New York: Routledge, 2001). Catriona Kelly: Children’s World. Growing Up in Russia 1890-1991. (New Haven & London, Yale University Press 2007). Linda Mahood: Policing Gender, Class and Family: Britain, 1850-1940. (Edmonton, Alberta: The University of Alberta Press, 1995). Lydia Murdoch: Imagined Orphans. Poor Families, Child Welfare, and Contested Citizenship in London. (New Brunswick, NJ and London: Rutgers University Press, 2006. Tara Zahra: Kidnapped Souls: National Indifference and the Battle for Children in the Bohemian Lands, 1900-1948. (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2011).
Reader:
All necessary readings will be online available on the Elearning-Platform (https://elearning.uni-regensburg.de/login/index.php).
Additional Information (Hinweise):