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Book SynopsisIn the 1950s the colonial British government in Northern and Southern Rhodesia (present-day Zambia and Zimbabwe) began construction on a large hydroelectric dam that created Lake Kariba and dislocated nearly 60,000 indigenous residents. Three decades later, Pamela Reynolds began fieldwork with the Tonga people to study the lasting effects of the dispossession of their land on their lives. In The Uncaring, Intricate WorldReynolds shares her field diary, in which she records her efforts to study children and their labor and, by doing so, exposes the character of everyday life. More than a memoir, her diary captures the range of pleasures, difficulties, frustrations, contradictions, and grappling with ethical questions that all anthropologists experience in the field. The Uncaring, Intricate World concludes with afterwords by Jane I. Guyer and Julie Livingston, who critically reflect on its context, its meaning for today, and relevance to conducting anthropological work.Trade Review“Pamela Reynolds's ethnography-diary The Uncaring, Intricate World elegantly captures the vicissitudes of life in a setting of breathtaking sunsets, stunning moon rises, brutal gusts of night wind, and the ceaselessly annoying high pitch of the mosquito's whine. In the pages of this wonderful book she presents a complex cast of memorable characters whose life challenges underscore both the fragility and resilience of the human condition as well as the small pleasures of sipping brandy after a long day of being-in-the-world.” -- Paul Stoller, author of * Adventures in Blogging: Public Anthropology and Popular Media *“The dated entries in The Uncaring, Intricate World bring into view not what is hidden and occult but what is before our eyes. Pamela Reynolds's writings are renowned for showing us that children haunt anthropological texts even as they go unacknowledged—yet this book adds an entirely new dimension to Reynolds's work by revealing the child who hides in the anthropologist.” -- Veena Das, Krieger-Eisenhower Professor of Anthropology, Johns Hopkins University"Reynolds engages with familiar fieldwork dilemmas – ethical, practical, methodological, social – with thoughtful candour." -- Hayley Macgregor * Times Literary Supplement *"Uncaring, Intricate World is well-structured, easy to read and intellectually stimulating. . . . It presents us with a different ethnographic form from the monograph, a deeply immersive, descriptive, everyday sense of what anthropologists do and what anthropology is and can be." -- Joshua Matanzima * Journal of Southern African Studies *"As we read, we cannot help but conclude that the book’s title is very appropriate. We come to know the culture and relationships of the Tonga people as extremely intricate. . . . Reynolds helps us see these intricacies, and we finish reading caring about these people." -- David W. Restrick * African Studies Quarterly *"A wonderful book to read. . . . While this diary documents happenings from nearly forty years ago, many of the observations are still relevant today. This is a vital source of insight for current students and researchers. It is beautifully written and edited and provides glimpses into a world many of us who study and write on Zimbabwe are familiar with." -- Rory Pilossof * African Studies Review *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix Foreword. The Unsubstantial Territory / Todd Meyers xi Introduction 1 A Field Diary 31 Afterword. Noticing Life, Matters Arising / Jane I. Guyer 173 Afterword. Sitting Quietly, Traveling in Time / Julie Livingston 175 Glossary 179 Bibliography 185 Index 189

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Book SynopsisIn the 1950s the colonial British government in Northern and Southern Rhodesia (present-day Zambia and Zimbabwe) began construction on a large hydroelectric dam that created Lake Kariba and dislocated nearly 60,000 indigenous residents. Three decades later, Pamela Reynolds began fieldwork with the Tonga people to study the lasting effects of the dispossession of their land on their lives. In The Uncaring, Intricate WorldReynolds shares her field diary, in which she records her efforts to study children and their labor and, by doing so, exposes the character of everyday life. More than a memoir, her diary captures the range of pleasures, difficulties, frustrations, contradictions, and grappling with ethical questions that all anthropologists experience in the field. The Uncaring, Intricate World concludes with afterwords by Jane I. Guyer and Julie Livingston, who critically reflect on its context, its meaning for today, and relevance to conducting anthropological work.Trade Review“Pamela Reynolds's ethnography-diary The Uncaring, Intricate World elegantly captures the vicissitudes of life in a setting of breathtaking sunsets, stunning moon rises, brutal gusts of night wind, and the ceaselessly annoying high pitch of the mosquito's whine. In the pages of this wonderful book she presents a complex cast of memorable characters whose life challenges underscore both the fragility and resilience of the human condition as well as the small pleasures of sipping brandy after a long day of being-in-the-world.” -- Paul Stoller, author of * Adventures in Blogging: Public Anthropology and Popular Media *“The dated entries in The Uncaring, Intricate World bring into view not what is hidden and occult but what is before our eyes. Pamela Reynolds's writings are renowned for showing us that children haunt anthropological texts even as they go unacknowledged—yet this book adds an entirely new dimension to Reynolds's work by revealing the child who hides in the anthropologist.” -- Veena Das, Krieger-Eisenhower Professor of Anthropology, Johns Hopkins University"Reynolds engages with familiar fieldwork dilemmas – ethical, practical, methodological, social – with thoughtful candour." -- Hayley Macgregor * Times Literary Supplement *"Uncaring, Intricate World is well-structured, easy to read and intellectually stimulating. . . . It presents us with a different ethnographic form from the monograph, a deeply immersive, descriptive, everyday sense of what anthropologists do and what anthropology is and can be." -- Joshua Matanzima * Journal of Southern African Studies *"As we read, we cannot help but conclude that the book’s title is very appropriate. We come to know the culture and relationships of the Tonga people as extremely intricate. . . . Reynolds helps us see these intricacies, and we finish reading caring about these people." -- David W. Restrick * African Studies Quarterly *"A wonderful book to read. . . . While this diary documents happenings from nearly forty years ago, many of the observations are still relevant today. This is a vital source of insight for current students and researchers. It is beautifully written and edited and provides glimpses into a world many of us who study and write on Zimbabwe are familiar with." -- Rory Pilossof * African Studies Review *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix Foreword. The Unsubstantial Territory / Todd Meyers xi Introduction 1 A Field Diary 31 Afterword. Noticing Life, Matters Arising / Jane I. Guyer 173 Afterword. Sitting Quietly, Traveling in Time / Julie Livingston 175 Glossary 179 Bibliography 185 Index 189

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Book SynopsisTyler Bickford traces the dramatic rise of the tween pop music industry, showing how it marshaled childishness as a key element in legitimizing children's participation in public culture.Trade Review“A pathbreaking contribution that will reach and be relevant to a wide audience, Tween Pop is the first book to treat the tween pop explosion of the 2000s as a cohesive phenomenon. I have no doubt that it will reach a wide audience while repositioning music as central to childhood studies and demanding for children's music a central place in the study of popular music as a whole.” -- Diane Pecknold, author of * The Selling Sound: The Rise of the Country Music Industry *“Tyler Bickford masterfully describes a ‘tween moment’ in American public culture, examining those young music consumers who teeter between childhood and adolescence, and the attention of the popular music industry in reconceptualizing music for them in this critical growth stage. This highly original and ambitious book is a substantial contribution to ethnomusicology, sociology, media studies, education, and child studies, and convincingly clarifies the struggle of the culture industries to convert childhood into a cultural identity all its own.” -- Patricia Shehan Campbell, University of Washington“Tween Pop offers valuable new directions in many areas across multiple disciplines. The scholarship here should remain beneficial for quite some time. . . . I urge readers to pick up this book now and make the most of it.” -- Christopher A. Medjesky * Journal of Popular Culture *“Tween Pop is well-researched, expertly written, and thorough, and it includes supporting images. It is an essential text for those wanting to understand the important tween audience and its continuing impact on popular music.” -- Kathy Merlock Jackson * Journal of American Culture *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments vii Introduction. The Tween Moment 1 1. Singing Along 41 2. Music Television 56 3. "Having It All" 87 4. The Whiteness of Tween Innocence 106 5. The Tween Prodigy at Home and Online 140 Conclusion. After the Tween Moment 167 Notes 187 References 197 Index 221

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Book SynopsisIn the early years of the twenty-first century, the US music industry created a new market for tweens, selling music that was cooler than Barney, but that still felt safe for children. In Tween Pop Tyler Bickford traces the dramatic rise of the tween music industry, showing how it marshaled childishness as a key element in legitimizing children's participation in public culture. The industry played on long-standing gendered and racialized constructions of childhood as feminine and white-both central markers of innocence and childishness. In addition to Kidz Bop, High School Musical, and the Disney Channel's music programs, Bickford examines Taylor Swift in relation to girlhood and whiteness, Justin Bieber's childish immaturity, and Miley Cyrus/Hannah Montana and postfeminist discourses of work-life balance. In outlining how tween pop imagined and positioned childhood as both intimate and public as well as a cultural identity to be marketed to, Bickford demonstrates the importance of children's music to core questions of identity politics, consumer culture, and the public sphere.Trade Review“A pathbreaking contribution that will reach and be relevant to a wide audience, Tween Pop is the first book to treat the tween pop explosion of the 2000s as a cohesive phenomenon. I have no doubt that it will reach a wide audience while repositioning music as central to childhood studies and demanding for children's music a central place in the study of popular music as a whole.” -- Diane Pecknold, author of * The Selling Sound: The Rise of the Country Music Industry *“Tyler Bickford masterfully describes a ‘tween moment’ in American public culture, examining those young music consumers who teeter between childhood and adolescence, and the attention of the popular music industry in reconceptualizing music for them in this critical growth stage. This highly original and ambitious book is a substantial contribution to ethnomusicology, sociology, media studies, education, and child studies, and convincingly clarifies the struggle of the culture industries to convert childhood into a cultural identity all its own.” -- Patricia Shehan Campbell, University of Washington“Tween Pop offers valuable new directions in many areas across multiple disciplines. The scholarship here should remain beneficial for quite some time. . . . I urge readers to pick up this book now and make the most of it.” -- Christopher A. Medjesky * Journal of Popular Culture *“Tween Pop is well-researched, expertly written, and thorough, and it includes supporting images. It is an essential text for those wanting to understand the important tween audience and its continuing impact on popular music.” -- Kathy Merlock Jackson * Journal of American Culture *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments vii Introduction. The Tween Moment 1 1. Singing Along 41 2. Music Television 56 3. "Having It All" 87 4. The Whiteness of Tween Innocence 106 5. The Tween Prodigy at Home and Online 140 Conclusion. After the Tween Moment 167 Notes 187 References 197 Index 221

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Book SynopsisWinner, Outstanding Scholarly Contribution Award of the Section on Children and Youth, given by the American Sociological AssociationFinalist for the 2021 C. Wright Mills Award, given by the Society for the Study of Social ProblemsLatinx children navigating identity, citizenship, and belonging in a divided America An estimated sixty million people in the United States are of Latinx descent, with youth under the age of eighteen making up two-thirds of this swiftly growing demographic. In Growing Up Latinx, Jesica Siham Fernández explores the lives of Latinx youth as they grapple with their social and political identities from an early age, and pursue a sense of belonging in their schools and communities as they face an increasingly hostile political climate.Drawing on interviews with nine-to-twelve-year-olds, Fernández gives us rare insight into how Latinx youth understand their own citizenship and bravely forge opportTrade ReviewGrowing Up Latinx provides a rich ethnographic account of how racist nativism, immigration policy and enforcement, and dominant ideas about 'good citizenship' play out in the lives of Latinx youth from immigrant and mixed status families. Fernandez powerfully centers Latinx young people’s own critical interpretations of citizenship as a status, a right, and a set of practices. She recognizes these young people as a source of theoretical insight into the multiple and shifting meanings of citizenship, making innovative contributions to the fields of migration studies, Latinx studies, childhood studies, and citizenship studies. -- Jessica K. Taft, author of The Kids Are in Charge: Activism and Power in Peru's Movement of Working ChildrenJesica Siham Fernández holds our hands tightly as we cross the borders into Growing up Latinx. With ethnographic care, she tells the stories of many young people and their immigration struggles at the border, including that of 6 year old Jesica, sin papeles, eager to spit up details to satisfy an intimidating border guard. Fernández gifts us a volume saturated in joy, resistance and justice. She insists that 'belonging is an inalienable right' and that citizenship must be understood beyond borders. Few scholars can write, across scale, like this, sketching young lives with grace, animating intimate moments of joy and fear, and accompanying readers as we consider our obligation to build a world not yet in existence. -- Michelle Fine, author of Just Research in Contentious Times: Widening the Methodological ImaginationIn Growing Up Latinx, Jesica Siham Fernandez disputes notions of children as 'citizens in the making' who are incapable of critical political understandings and actions.Taking us into the world of 9-12 year olds from mixed immigrant status, low-income families, Fernandez shows us that children are social and political thinkers and actors. This rich ethnography weaves a collective story of pain and possibility as children react to racialized nativism by engaging in acts of citizenship to demand dignity—and the right to belong—for themselves and their families. This book is a welcomed addition to scholarly works on children’s sociopolitical development as it underscores our responsibility to let children find their political voices and enact their political agency. -- Nilda Flores-González, author of Citizens but Not Americans: Race and Belonging among Latino MillennialsFernández presents a conceptually thorough and substantively rich account of how Latinx youth embody and make meaning of citizenship…Along with Latinx youth narratives, Fernández grants us with a political vision and sociological future of what democracy will signify in the decades to come. * Ethnic and Racial Studies *Precisely one of the values of this book is the author’s explicit valuing of the resilience and the strength of this community and, more specifically, its youth…Growing up Latinx also emphasizes the complex cultural and social identities that the adolescents must navigate. -- Yamile M. Martí Haidar * Feminist Inquiry in Social Work *Fernández presents a conceptually thorough and substantively rich account of how Latinx youth embody and make meaning of citizenship…Along with Latinx youth narratives, Fernández grants us with a political vision and sociological future of what democracy will signify in the decades to come. -- Aaron Arredondo * Ethnic and Racial Studies *

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Book SynopsisWinner, Outstanding Scholarly Contribution Award of the Section on Children and Youth, given by the American Sociological AssociationFinalist for the 2021 C. Wright Mills Award, given by the Society for the Study of Social ProblemsLatinx children navigating identity, citizenship, and belonging in a divided America An estimated sixty million people in the United States are of Latinx descent, with youth under the age of eighteen making up two-thirds of this swiftly growing demographic. In Growing Up Latinx, Jesica Siham Fernández explores the lives of Latinx youth as they grapple with their social and political identities from an early age, and pursue a sense of belonging in their schools and communities as they face an increasingly hostile political climate.Drawing on interviews with nine-to-twelve-year-olds, Fernández gives us rare insight into how Latinx youth understand their own citizenship and bravely forge opportTrade ReviewGrowing Up Latinx provides a rich ethnographic account of how racist nativism, immigration policy and enforcement, and dominant ideas about 'good citizenship' play out in the lives of Latinx youth from immigrant and mixed status families. Fernandez powerfully centers Latinx young people’s own critical interpretations of citizenship as a status, a right, and a set of practices. She recognizes these young people as a source of theoretical insight into the multiple and shifting meanings of citizenship, making innovative contributions to the fields of migration studies, Latinx studies, childhood studies, and citizenship studies. -- Jessica K. Taft, author of The Kids Are in Charge: Activism and Power in Peru's Movement of Working ChildrenJesica Siham Fernández holds our hands tightly as we cross the borders into Growing up Latinx. With ethnographic care, she tells the stories of many young people and their immigration struggles at the border, including that of 6 year old Jesica, sin papeles, eager to spit up details to satisfy an intimidating border guard. Fernández gifts us a volume saturated in joy, resistance and justice. She insists that 'belonging is an inalienable right' and that citizenship must be understood beyond borders. Few scholars can write, across scale, like this, sketching young lives with grace, animating intimate moments of joy and fear, and accompanying readers as we consider our obligation to build a world not yet in existence. -- Michelle Fine, author of Just Research in Contentious Times: Widening the Methodological ImaginationIn Growing Up Latinx, Jesica Siham Fernandez disputes notions of children as 'citizens in the making' who are incapable of critical political understandings and actions.Taking us into the world of 9-12 year olds from mixed immigrant status, low-income families, Fernandez shows us that children are social and political thinkers and actors. This rich ethnography weaves a collective story of pain and possibility as children react to racialized nativism by engaging in acts of citizenship to demand dignity—and the right to belong—for themselves and their families. This book is a welcomed addition to scholarly works on children’s sociopolitical development as it underscores our responsibility to let children find their political voices and enact their political agency. -- Nilda Flores-González, author of Citizens but Not Americans: Race and Belonging among Latino MillennialsFernández presents a conceptually thorough and substantively rich account of how Latinx youth embody and make meaning of citizenship…Along with Latinx youth narratives, Fernández grants us with a political vision and sociological future of what democracy will signify in the decades to come. * Ethnic and Racial Studies *Precisely one of the values of this book is the author’s explicit valuing of the resilience and the strength of this community and, more specifically, its youth…Growing up Latinx also emphasizes the complex cultural and social identities that the adolescents must navigate. -- Yamile M. Martí Haidar * Feminist Inquiry in Social Work *Fernández presents a conceptually thorough and substantively rich account of how Latinx youth embody and make meaning of citizenship…Along with Latinx youth narratives, Fernández grants us with a political vision and sociological future of what democracy will signify in the decades to come. -- Aaron Arredondo * Ethnic and Racial Studies *

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Book SynopsisExamines the Protestant origins of motherhood and the child consumer Throughout history, the responsibility for children's moral well-being has fallen into the laps of mothers. In The Moral Project of Childhood, the noted childhood studies scholar Daniel Thomas Cook illustrates how mothers in the nineteenth-century United States meticulously managed their children's needs and wants, pleasures and pains, through the material world so as to produce the child as a moral project. Drawing on a century of religiously-oriented child care advice in women's periodicals, he examines how children ultimately came to be understood by mothersand later, by commercial actorsas consumers. From concerns about taste, to forms of discipline and punishment, to play and toys, Cook delves into the social politics of motherhood, historical anxieties about childhood, and early children's consumer culture. An engaging read, The Moral Project of Childhood provides a rich cultural histTrade ReviewThe Moral Project of Childhood is a thoughtful and ambitious book that takes on some of the received wisdom about the historical trajectories of childhood and children's consumption. Daniel Thomas Cook advances a new theory that achieves what previous scholars could not: a historically embedded account of how the modern-day child consumer is not a sharp break with 19th century understandings of childhood, but instead a continuation. -- Allison J. Pugh, author of The Tumbleweed Society: Working and Caring in an Age of InsecurityCook makes a timely and exciting intervention into questions of value, providing stimulating insights into the tempestuous moral project of childhood. Examining 19th-century Anglo-American 'mother's magazines', he argues persuasively against the treatment of consumption as an intervention into 'pre-capitalist childhood'. By adeptly charting the co-constitutive logic of capital and childhood, and the weighty accountability this entails for mothers and motherhood, he offers a lens through which to view the making and exclusive idealization of middle-class White childhoods which resonate to this day. The book asks not just who is a 'child', but when and how bodies are made into children, urging us to interrogate the way contests over childhood are profoundly implicated in affective, moral, and economic valuations. -- Rachel Rosen, editor of Feminism and the Politics of Childhood: Friends or Foes?This book treats changes in upper-class education in the 19th-century northeastern US [...] Cook argues that rather than continuing to instruct children according to stern religious values to ensure their moral education, this period emphasized refined taste—a sense of which goods were and were not good—as the new basis of morality and defense of the status quo. * Choice *

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Book SynopsisExplores how the institutional management of children's sexualities in boarding schools affected children's future social, political, and economic opportunities Tracing the US's investment in disciplining minoritarian sexualities since the late nineteenth century, Mary Zaborskis focuses on a ubiquitous but understudied figure: the queer child. Queer Childhoods examines the lived and literary experiences of children who attended reform schools, schools for the blind, African American industrial schools, and Native American boarding schools. In mapping the institutional terrain of queer childhoods in educational settings of the late nineteenth- and twentieth-century, the book offers an original archive of children's sexual and embodied experiences. Zaborskis argues that these boarding schoolsdesigned to segregate racialized, criminalized, and disabled children from mainstream cultureproduced new forms of childhood. These childhoods have secured American futures in which inTrade ReviewA fierce and brilliant book. Mary Zaborskis argues that the U.S. and Canadian states queered minoritarian populations in order to unfit them for full citizenship. Deep in the archives of industrial schools, Native American boarding schools, and schools for the blind, Zaborskis demonstrates that these institutions targeted the sexuality of Black, Native, poor, and disabled students, preparing them for futures that would never come to pass. By attending to the experiences of actual children caught up in this biopolitical project, Queer Childhoods challenges pieties about education, the Child, and a queer future untroubled by these violent legacies of exclusion. -- Heather K. Love, University of PennsylvaniaSmart and provocative. Mary Zaborskis grapples with a history emergent in queer theory. How did specific institutions queer children against their will, for almost two centuries? That is, how were children from minoritized backgrounds ‘sexually othered’—made ‘strange,’ thus queer—so that they could be forced into normalizing scenes that guaranteed their failure to assimilate to norms? Here, the act of ‘queering’ is not to be embraced. It’s a barbed dynamic that aims to manage lives and threaten certain futures. What a rending read—riveting and necessary. -- Kathryn Bond Stockton, author of The Queer Child, or Growing Sideways in the Twentieth Century

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Book SynopsisHow children are taught to control their feelings and how they resistthis emotional management through cultural production. Today, even young kids talk to each other across social media by referencing memes,songs, and movements, constructing a common vernacular that resists parental, educational, and media imperatives to name their feelings and thus control their bodies. Over the past two decades, children's television programming has provided a therapeutic site for the processing of emotions such as anger, but in doing so has enforced normative structures of feeling that, Jane Juffer argues, weaken the intensity and range of children's affective experiences. Don't Use Your Words! seeks to challenge those norms, highlighting the ways that kids express their feelings through cultural productions including drawings, fan art, memes, YouTube videos, dance moves, and conversations while gaming online. Focusing on kids between ages five and nine, Don't Use Your Words! situates these prodTrade Review"Juffer raises provocative questions concerning children’s emotions... Recommended. Graduate students, researchers, faculty." * Choice *"Juffer values children’s media, demanding that we pay attention to how influential their cultural production is. Including cultural analyses of Blue’s Clues to YouTube, electoral politics to immigration policy, and education to affect theory, Juffer deepens each field as much as she puts them in conversation with each other through careful, deliberate inspection. Her discussions of emotional intelligence, expression, and management are woven alongside her treatment of children’s drawings, art exhibitions, and writings in a way that expands the scope of contemporary media studies. Don’t Use Your Words! is a great accomplishment and a true gift to us all—children, parents, and scholars alike." -- Sarah Projansky, author of Spectacular Girls: Media Fascination and Celebrity Culture"[Juffer] develops a theory challenging the idea that children cannot be viewed as having emotional intelligence. [...] This book is an excellent read for parents, psychological researchers, and educators of all sorts." * Communication Booknotes Quarterly *

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"Ann Traverss The Trans Generation is an astounding and essential qualitative study that collects heartfelt, honest anecdotes from a variety of transgender children and their parents." * Foreword Reviews *"Given that trans children are subjected to harassment, bullying, and systemic lack of support, theres no better time than now to have this book as a resource." * Bitch Magazine *"Walks readers through challenges that transgender children face in schools, in public spaces, with their parents, and navigating health care...A useful text." * Library Journal *"In this insightful evaluation of the lives of transgender kids, the author closely examines schools, spaces (especially bathrooms and locker rooms), parents, and healthcare. The book is...an important addition to the growing body of transgender literature." * Booklist *"Whether due to a general lack of understanding or consistent misinterpretations of definitions, gender and identity can be challenging topics for many individuals. Travers helps combat this confusion by exploring aspects of gender and identity research that are often perplexing for students. Travers presents an innovative exploration of the experiences of transgender children, offering concrete definitions of terminology and fresh approaches to discussing gender, sex, and identity. To some, these definitions and explanations might seem inconsequential, but they can be invaluable to those less informed about gender research. The text goes beyond simply discussing issues related to gender and children by listing resources for children, parents, lawmakers, and educators as well as providing policy recommendations for healthcare and education professionals … This illuminating text will be an appreciated addition to any library collection, especially those supporting sociology, psychology, gender studies, or criminology and criminal justice programs." * Choice *"Passionate, smart, sensitive, and on-target in its policy recommendations, The Trans Generation is indispensable reading for anybody who wants to understand the gender climate-change our culture is currently experiencing. If you care about a kid who does gender differentlyan estimated 1 in 137 of all people in the US between the ages of 13-17and want them to have the best future possible, then read this book, take it to heart, and start making that future a reality for them today." -- Susan Stryker, Author of Transgender History"By focusing on varying degrees of precariousness in childrens livesprimarily in school and in relation to pathologizing medical discourses and practicesAnn Travers makes a much-needed contribution to the scholarship on trans subjectivity generally, and trans youth in particular.a pleasure to read." -- Jane Ward, Author of Not Gay: Sex Between Straight White Men"Compassionate and pragmatic, this is the book about trans kids that everyparent, teacher, coach, caregiver, and policymaker needs to read!" -- Heath Fogg Davis, Author of Beyond Trans: Does Gender Matter?"The book is a far leap from a legacy of scholarship that treats transgender persons as the object of interest, and instead interrogates the social institutions, and agents, that react and respond to them—or that fail to." * Social Forces *

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Book SynopsisIn the decades after the Civil War, urbanization, industrialization, and immigration marked the start of the Gilded Age, a period of rapid economic growth but also social upheaval. Reformers responded to the social and economic chaos with a search for order, as famously described by historian Robert Wiebe. Most reformers agreed that one of the nation's top priorities should be its children and youth, who, they believed, suffered more from the disorder plaguing the rapidly growing nation than any other group. Children and Youth during the Gilded Age and Progressive Era explores both nineteenth century conditions that led Progressives to their search for order and some of the solutions applied to children and youth in the context of that search. Edited by renowned scholar of children's history James Marten, the collection of eleven essays offers case studies relevant to educational reform, child labor laws, underage marriage, and recreation for children, among others. Including Trade ReviewBy presenting this scholarship from the burgeoning subfield of childhood and youth studies in such an engaging manner, Marten has made an original and useful contribution to the literature on the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. * The Journal of American History *The two-part book ('Shaping the Future' and 'Managing Change') has some excellent articles, and accompanying documents include a memoir of a Native American boarding school student, high school newspaper articles, and juvenile court documents. * Choice *The essays that comprise this outstanding collection make an important contribution to scholarly understandings of the Progressive era. They feature an abundance of historical actors engaged in a variety of activities that together paint a picture of the period's complex, inconsistent, and contradictory conflicts over the changing notions of childhood and youth. -- Miriam Forman-Brunell,author of Babysitter: An American HistoryTable of ContentsPart I. Shaping the Future: Institutions and the Law 17 1 Playing Progressively? Race, Reform, and Playful Pedagogies 19 in the Origins of Philadelphia's Starr Garden Recreation Park, 1857-1904 Deborah Valentine 2 Model Schools and Field Days: Colorado Fuel and Iron's 42 Construction of Education and Recreation for Children, 1901-1918 Fawn-Amber Montoya 3 Of Families or Individuals? Southern Child Workers and the 59 Progressive Crusade for Child Labor Regulation, 1899-1920 Gwendoline Alphonso 4 "I Was So Glad to Be in School Here": Religious Organizations 81 and the School on Ellis Island in the Early 1900s Claire B. Gallagher 5 The Trajectory of Benevolence: Progressivism in the 102 Little Colonel Books Sarah E. Clere Part II. Managing Change: Children, Youth, 121 and Families 6 Willful Disobedience: Young People and School Authority 125 in the Nineteenth-Century United States James D. Schmidt 7 The Contested Meanings of Child Marriage in the 145 Turn-of-the-Century United States Nicholas L. Syrett 8 Sex, Abortion, and Prostitution in the Lives of Gilded Age 166 Chicago Girls Mary Linehan 9 Ohio Departures: George as Progressive Youth in Sherwood 187 Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio John James and Tom Ue 10 Fit Body, Fit Mind

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Book SynopsisDetails the possibilities and challenges of intergenerational activism and social movements Since 1976, the Peruvian movement of working children has fought to redefine age-based roles in society, including defending children's right to work. In The Kids Are in Charge, Jessica K. Taft gives us an inside look at this groundbreaking, intergenerational social movement, showing that kids canand should berespected as equal partners in economic, social, and political life. Through participant observation, Taft explores how the movement has redefined relationships between kids and adults; how they put these ideas into practice within their organizations; and how they advocate for them in larger society. Ultimately, she encourages us to question the widely accepted beliefs that children should not work or participate in politics. The Kids Are in Charge is a provocative invitation to re-imagine childhood, power, and politics.Trade ReviewThe Kids Are in Charge is a powerful, provocative, and necessary book. Centering the voices and strategies of the Peruvian movement of working children, Jessica Taft urges us to question assumptions about children—who they are, and who they can be—to imagine childhood otherwise. In engaging and accessible prose, Taft's analysis of children as critical thinkers and political agents should be required reading not only for scholars of Latin America, but teachers, parents, policy makers and everyone concerned with the complexity of childhood. -- María Elena García, author of Making Indigenous Citizens: Identities, Development, and Multicultural Activism in PeruWhile children are gaining global renown anew as activists for the environment and for peace, for gun control, and for human rights, Taft reveals the potent challenge children pose for movements against social inequality, arguing that until we address the hierarchy of age, all other inequalities will fail to crumble. Incisive, empathic, surprising, The Kids Are in Charge is a powerful account of children refusing to settle for a hierarchical, paternalistic status quo, a story of children modeling a new way of being together even as they push for political and institutional change. -- Allison J. Pugh, author of The Tumbleweed Society: Working and Caring in an Age of InsecurityThe Kids Are in Charge is an insightful scholarly but accessible work on one of the most amazing social and human rights movements of modern history. Jessica K. Taft must be commended for providing new and powerful perspectives to understand this unique phenomenon. She convincingly busts myths about children and builds the case of treating children as equal citizens of this world...Written in beautiful and easy-to-understand language, The Kids Are in Charge is a very well-researched book. It is a must-read if you are interested in Latin America or child rights. -- Washington Book ReviewFor those social movement scholars who have yet to grapple with age as a form of power relations, Jessica Taft’s book The Kids Are in Charge provides a terrific introduction. * Mobilization *

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Book SynopsisDetails the possibilities and challenges of intergenerational activism and social movements Since 1976, the Peruvian movement of working children has fought to redefine age-based roles in society, including defending children's right to work. In The Kids Are in Charge, Jessica K. Taft gives us an inside look at this groundbreaking, intergenerational social movement, showing that kids canand should berespected as equal partners in economic, social, and political life. Through participant observation, Taft explores how the movement has redefined relationships between kids and adults; how they put these ideas into practice within their organizations; and how they advocate for them in larger society. Ultimately, she encourages us to question the widely accepted beliefs that children should not work or participate in politics. The Kids Are in Charge is a provocative invitation to re-imagine childhood, power, and politics.Trade ReviewThe Kids Are in Charge is a powerful, provocative, and necessary book. Centering the voices and strategies of the Peruvian movement of working children, Jessica Taft urges us to question assumptions about children—who they are, and who they can be—to imagine childhood otherwise. In engaging and accessible prose, Taft's analysis of children as critical thinkers and political agents should be required reading not only for scholars of Latin America, but teachers, parents, policy makers and everyone concerned with the complexity of childhood. -- María Elena García, author of Making Indigenous Citizens: Identities, Development, and Multicultural Activism in PeruWhile children are gaining global renown anew as activists for the environment and for peace, for gun control, and for human rights, Taft reveals the potent challenge children pose for movements against social inequality, arguing that until we address the hierarchy of age, all other inequalities will fail to crumble. Incisive, empathic, surprising, The Kids Are in Charge is a powerful account of children refusing to settle for a hierarchical, paternalistic status quo, a story of children modeling a new way of being together even as they push for political and institutional change. -- Allison J. Pugh, author of The Tumbleweed Society: Working and Caring in an Age of InsecurityThe Kids Are in Charge is an insightful scholarly but accessible work on one of the most amazing social and human rights movements of modern history. Jessica K. Taft must be commended for providing new and powerful perspectives to understand this unique phenomenon. She convincingly busts myths about children and builds the case of treating children as equal citizens of this world...Written in beautiful and easy-to-understand language, The Kids Are in Charge is a very well-researched book. It is a must-read if you are interested in Latin America or child rights. -- Washington Book ReviewFor those social movement scholars who have yet to grapple with age as a form of power relations, Jessica Taft’s book The Kids Are in Charge provides a terrific introduction. * Mobilization *

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Book SynopsisA frank analysis of the medical and emotional inequalities that pervade the healthcare process for critically ill children Families who have a child with a life-threatening illness face a daunting road ahead of them, one that not only upends their everyday lives, but also strikes at the very heart of parenthood. In Save My Kid, Amanda M. Gengler traces the emotional difficulties these families navigate as they confront a fundamentally unequal healthcare system in the United States. Gengler reveals the unrecognized, everyday inequalities tangled up in the process of seeking medical care, showing how different families manage their children's critical illnesses. She also uncovers the role that emotional goalsdeeply rooted in the culture of illness and medicineplay in medical decision-making, healthcare interactions, and the end of children's lives. A deeply compassionate read, Save My Kid is an inside look at inequality in healthcare among those with the most at stake.Trade ReviewGengler's measured yet empathetic tone sets an example for all sociologists writing on emotionally charged topics. As intense as her account oftentimes is, it never devolves into empty sensationalism. The result is an eloquent and memorable illustration of how social inequalities play out in hospitals—a solid contribution to medical sociology, the sociology of emotions, and scholarship on culture and inequality. * American Journal of Sociology *Amanda Gengler movingly captures the high-stakes world of families coping with severe childhood illness and their struggle to maintain hope as they navigate the contemporary health landscape where inequality abound. A vivid demonstration of health as an arena that intensifies inequalities between families. -- Amy Best, author of Fast Food Kids: Lunch Lines, French Fries and Social TiesWith deep empathy and drawing from personal experience, this mesmerizing ethnography explores the opportunities and pitfalls of hope when parents face the challenge of their child’s life threatening disease. Rather than pinning all our hopes on hope, Gengler calls for a broader and more flexible emotional spectrum in times of life-or-death health crises. -- Stefan Timmermans, co-author of Saving Babies: The Consequences of Newborn Genetic ScreeningAmanda Gengler is a gifted ethnographer whose compassion and insight illuminate parents’ harrowing efforts to maintain hope while seeking life-saving treatments for their children. In showing how emotions intersect with cultural health capital, this indispensable book exposes the complex ways social inequality affects our ability to hope and cope in times of crisis. -- Jennifer Lois, author of Home is Where the School is: The Logic of Homeschooling and the Emotional Labor of Mothering

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Book SynopsisHonorable Mention, 2020 Stirling Prize for Best Published Work in Psychological Anthropology, given by the Society for Psychological AnthropologyHonorable Mention, New Millennium Book Award, given by the Society for Medical AnthropologyHow youth on the autism spectrum negotiate the contested meanings of neurodiversityAutism is a deeply contested condition. To some, it is a devastating invader, harming children and isolating them. To others, it is an asset and a distinctive aspect of an individual's identity. How do young people on the spectrum make sense of this conflict, in the context of their own developing identity? While most of the research on Asperger's and related autism conditions has been conducted with individuals or in settings in which people on the spectrum are in the minority, this book draws on two years of ethnographic work in communities that bring people with Asperger's and related conditions togetheTrade ReviewIncredibly well-written… Fein threads answers to some of the most pressing questions around autism in a delicate and deliberate way. There have been quite a few monographs on autism in the last few years, but I don’t mind saying – and I say this as the author of one of them myself! – this is the best one. -- Des Fitzgerald, University of ExeterAn extraordinary journey into the lives of autistic youth. Fein’s empathic understanding of autism jumps from every page of this beautiful and intelligent book, as we learn how autistic people produce their own knowledge and ways of being, stake out their place as agents rather than as patients, and resist being passive recipients of clinical or quantitative labels. -- Roy Richard Grinker, author of Unstrange Minds: Remapping the World of AutismAn amazing book—beautifully written, brilliantly conceived, precisely observed. The combination of an anthropologist’s eye and a clinician’s sensibility creates remarkable insight. Anyone interested in autism should read it. -- Tanya Marie Luhrmann, Howard H. and Jessie T. Watkins University Professor of Anthropology, Stanford UniversityI would easily recommend this one. I hope it gets read and shared by as many people who work in the medical field as possible, plus many more (perhaps it should be a library staple). * Treeshallow Musings *The author’s writing style is thoughtful and thought provoking. Brilliantly, sharply observed and immersive ... Fein’s writing is rich with experience, fondness for her participants and humour ... With resonance beyond the field of autism study, the book would be useful to any student engaging in ethnographic work. * Sociology of Health and Illness *Living on the Spectrum is written in an engaging, readable, and sometimes poetic style, which enhances its ability to reach a diverse audience beyond medical anthropologists interested in autism. * Medical Anthropology Quarterly *

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Book SynopsisA frank analysis of the medical and emotional inequalities that pervade the healthcare process for critically ill children Families who have a child with a life-threatening illness face a daunting road ahead of them, one that not only upends their everyday lives, but also strikes at the very heart of parenthood. In Save My Kid, Amanda M. Gengler traces the emotional difficulties these families navigate as they confront a fundamentally unequal healthcare system in the United States. Gengler reveals the unrecognized, everyday inequalities tangled up in the process of seeking medical care, showing how different families manage their children's critical illnesses. She also uncovers the role that emotional goalsdeeply rooted in the culture of illness and medicineplay in medical decision-making, healthcare interactions, and the end of children's lives. A deeply compassionate read, Save My Kid is an inside look at inequality in healthcare among those with the most at stake.Trade Review"Gengler's measured yet empathetic tone sets an example for all sociologists writing on emotionally charged topics. As intense as her account oftentimes is, it never devolves into empty sensationalism. The result is an eloquent and memorable illustration of how social inequalities play out in hospitals—a solid contribution to medical sociology, the sociology of emotions, and scholarship on culture and inequality." * American Journal of Sociology *"Amanda Gengler movingly captures the high-stakes world of families coping with severe childhood illness and their struggle to maintain hope as they navigate the contemporary health landscape where inequality abound. A vivid demonstration of health as an arena that intensifies inequalities between families." -- Amy Best, author of Fast Food Kids: Lunch Lines, French Fries and Social Ties"With deep empathy and drawing from personal experience, this mesmerizing ethnography explores the opportunities and pitfalls of hope when parents face the challenge of their child’s life threatening disease. Rather than pinning all our hopes on hope, Gengler calls for a broader and more flexible emotional spectrum in times of life-or-death health crises." -- Stefan Timmermans, co-author of Saving Babies: The Consequences of Newborn Genetic Screening"Amanda Gengler is a gifted ethnographer whose compassion and insight illuminate parents’ harrowing efforts to maintain hope while seeking life-saving treatments for their children. In showing how emotions intersect with cultural health capital, this indispensable book exposes the complex ways social inequality affects our ability to hope and cope in times of crisis." -- Jennifer Lois, author of Home is Where the School is: The Logic of Homeschooling and the Emotional Labor of Mothering

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Book SynopsisHonorable Mention, 2020 Stirling Prize for Best Published Work in Psychological Anthropology, given by the Society for Psychological AnthropologyHonorable Mention, New Millennium Book Award, given by the Society for Medical AnthropologyHow youth on the autism spectrum negotiate the contested meanings of neurodiversityAutism is a deeply contested condition. To some, it is a devastating invader, harming children and isolating them. To others, it is an asset and a distinctive aspect of an individual's identity. How do young people on the spectrum make sense of this conflict, in the context of their own developing identity? While most of the research on Asperger's and related autism conditions has been conducted with individuals or in settings in which people on the spectrum are in the minority, this book draws on two years of ethnographic work in communities that bring people with Asperger's and related conditions togetheTrade ReviewIncredibly well-written… Fein threads answers to some of the most pressing questions around autism in a delicate and deliberate way. There have been quite a few monographs on autism in the last few years, but I don’t mind saying – and I say this as the author of one of them myself! – this is the best one. -- Des Fitzgerald, University of ExeterAn extraordinary journey into the lives of autistic youth. Fein’s empathic understanding of autism jumps from every page of this beautiful and intelligent book, as we learn how autistic people produce their own knowledge and ways of being, stake out their place as agents rather than as patients, and resist being passive recipients of clinical or quantitative labels. -- Roy Richard Grinker, author of Unstrange Minds: Remapping the World of AutismAn amazing book—beautifully written, brilliantly conceived, precisely observed. The combination of an anthropologist’s eye and a clinician’s sensibility creates remarkable insight. Anyone interested in autism should read it. -- Tanya Marie Luhrmann, Howard H. and Jessie T. Watkins University Professor of Anthropology, Stanford UniversityI would easily recommend this one. I hope it gets read and shared by as many people who work in the medical field as possible, plus many more (perhaps it should be a library staple). * Treeshallow Musings *The author’s writing style is thoughtful and thought provoking. Brilliantly, sharply observed and immersive ... Fein’s writing is rich with experience, fondness for her participants and humour ... With resonance beyond the field of autism study, the book would be useful to any student engaging in ethnographic work. * Sociology of Health and Illness *Living on the Spectrum is written in an engaging, readable, and sometimes poetic style, which enhances its ability to reach a diverse audience beyond medical anthropologists interested in autism. * Medical Anthropology Quarterly *

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Book SynopsisExamines the Protestant origins of motherhood and the child consumer Throughout history, the responsibility for children's moral well-being has fallen into the laps of mothers. In The Moral Project of Childhood, the noted childhood studies scholar Daniel Thomas Cook illustrates how mothers in the nineteenth-century United States meticulously managed their children's needs and wants, pleasures and pains, through the material world so as to produce the child as a moral project. Drawing on a century of religiously-oriented child care advice in women's periodicals, he examines how children ultimately came to be understood by mothersand later, by commercial actorsas consumers. From concerns about taste, to forms of discipline and punishment, to play and toys, Cook delves into the social politics of motherhood, historical anxieties about childhood, and early children's consumer culture. An engaging read, The Moral Project of Childhood provides a rich cultural history of childhood.Trade Review"The Moral Project of Childhood is a thoughtful and ambitious book that takes on some of the received wisdom about the historical trajectories of childhood and children's consumption. Daniel Thomas Cook advances a new theory that achieves what previous scholars could not: a historically embedded account of how the modern-day child consumer is not a sharp break with 19th century understandings of childhood, but instead a continuation." -- Allison J. Pugh, author of The Tumbleweed Society: Working and Caring in an Age of Insecurity"Cook makes a timely and exciting intervention into questions of value, providing stimulating insights into the tempestuous moral project of childhood. Examining 19th-century Anglo-American 'mother's magazines', he argues persuasively against the treatment of consumption as an intervention into 'pre-capitalist childhood'. By adeptly charting the co-constitutive logic of capital and childhood, and the weighty accountability this entails for mothers and motherhood, he offers a lens through which to view the making and exclusive idealization of middle-class White childhoods which resonate to this day. The book asks not just who is a 'child', but when and how bodies are made into children, urging us to interrogate the way contests over childhood are profoundly implicated in affective, moral, and economic valuations." -- Rachel Rosen, editor of Feminism and the Politics of Childhood: Friends or Foes?"This book treats changes in upper-class education in the 19th-century northeastern US [...] Cook argues that rather than continuing to instruct children according to stern religious values to ensure their moral education, this period emphasized refined taste—a sense of which goods were and were not good—as the new basis of morality and defense of the status quo." * Choice *

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Book SynopsisAs the twentieth century dawned, progressive educators established a national organization for adolescent girls to combat what they believed to be a crisis of girls' education. A corollary to the Boy Scouts of America, founded just a few years earlier, the Camp Fire Girls became America's first and, for two decades, most popular girls' organization. Based on Protestant middle-class ideals-a regulatory model that reinforced hygiene, habit formation, hard work, and the idea that women related to the nation through service-the Camp Fire Girls invented new concepts of American girlhood by inviting disabled girls, Black girls, immigrants, and Native Americans to join. Though this often meant a false sense of cultural universality, in the girls' own hands membership was often profoundly empowering and provided marginalized girls spaces to explore the meaning of their own cultures in relation to changes taking place in twentieth-century America. Through the lens of the Camp Fire Girls, Jennifer Helgren traces the changing meanings of girls' citizenship in the cultural context of the twentieth century. Drawing on girls' scrapbooks, photographs, letters, and oral history interviews, in addition to adult voices in organization publications and speeches, The Camp Fire Girls explores critical intersections of gender, race, class, nation, and disability.Trade Review"Helgren's book provides an excellent model for study of youth organizations over time."—Elizabeth Tucker, Journal of Folkore Research Reviews"The Camp Fire Girls is truly a pleasure to read. From excellent analysis to captivating writing, Helgren's addition to the scholarship on youth organizations, girlhood, and outdoor education and programming is invaluable. Accessible to both the academy and the general population, The Camp Fire Girls is a fantastic piece of scholarship that succeeds in a multitude of ways and is a significant contribution to the field."—Montana Chandler, H-Environment“Jennifer Helgren provides a rich narrative about the Camp Fire Girls, a chapter of twentieth-century American youth culture that has been largely overlooked by historians. This is an important study of an organization that often found itself betwixt and between—empowering diverse modern girlhoods while promoting eclectically conservative visions of feminism.”—Susan A. Miller, author of Growing Girls: The Natural Origins of Girls’ Organizations in America“A fascinating book that grapples with the construction of American girlhood during the twentieth century. Captivating and multilayered. . . . The book is a model for how to write an organizational history that tells a far larger and more important story than that of a single organization.”—Sara Fieldston, author of Raising the World: Child Welfare in the American Century“By resisting the impulse to regard girls’ organizations as mere tools of gender indoctrination or middle-class indulgences, Jennifer Helgren’s examination of Camp Fire Girls makes a compelling case for the importance of revisiting a so-called familiar or known topic. Its meticulous research and stellar use of archives will serve as an example for undergraduates, graduate students, and her colleagues about what is possible in the history of childhood and youth. Helgren’s book will buttress the exciting array of new works in the history of girls and girlhood in the United States.”—Marcia Chatelain, author of South Side Girls: Growing Up in the Great MigrationTable of ContentsList of Illustrations Acknowledgments Introduction: The Camp Fire Girls Confront a Crisis in American Girlhood 1. “Preparing for Sex Equality”: Gender Ideals and the Founding Years 2. “Wohelo Maidens” and “Gypsy Trails”: Racial Mimicry and Camp Fire’s Picturesque Girl Citizen 3. “All Prejudices Seem to Disappear”: Race, Class, and Immigration in the Camp Fire Girls 4. “There Are Lots of Other Camp Fire Things We Can Do”: Disability, Disease, and Inclusion in the Camp Fire Girls 5. “Worship God”: The Camp Fire Girls, Antifascism, and Religion in the 1940s and 1950s 6. Being a “Homemaker—Plus”: Gender and the Spiritual Values of the Home 7. "Prejudices May Be Prevented": Race, Tolerance, and Democracy in the 1940s and 1950s 8. “The War on Poverty Is Being Waged by Camp Fire Girls”: The Metropolitan Critical Areas Project 9. “It’s a New Day”: Camp Fire’s Reckoning and Restructuring in the 1970s Epilogue: An All-Gender Organization for the Twenty-First Century Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisTwo Weeks Every Summer, which is based on extensive oral history interviews with former guests, hosts, and administrators in Fresh Air programs, opens a new chapter in the history of race in the United States by showing how the actions of hundreds of thousands of rural and suburban residents who hosted children from the city perpetuated racial inequity rather than overturned it. Since 1877 and to this day, Fresh Air programs from Maine to Montana have brought inner-city children to rural and suburban homes for two-week summer vacations. Tobin Miller Shearer brings to the forefront of his history of the Fresh Air program the voices of the children themselves through letters that they wrote, pictures that they took, and their testimonials. Shearer offers a careful social and cultural history of the Fresh Air programs, giving readers a good sense of the summer experiences for both hosts and the visiting children. By covering the racially transformative years between 1939 and 197Trade ReviewIn this thought-provoking analysis of the Fresh Air organization, Shearer (history, Univ. of Montana) describes philanthropic attempts to provide two weeks of vacation from the "unhealthy and dangerous cities" to mostly white suburban and rural counties for mainly minority city children from the 1940s to the 1970s. Initially a summer vacation program for poor white city children in the late 19th century, Fresh Air, still in existence, responded to population changes by catering to white hosts’ requests for young innocent girls, ages 5 to 12, to assuage their fears of Hispanic and black teenage boys. The organization also established camps for boys and disabled children. Fresh Air curtailed return visits for the youth to prevent interracial liaisons between teenagers. Alumni interviews reveal racial tensions and the education the children provided their hosts about civil rights and city life. Rejected from examining the Fresh Air archives, the author relies on the organization’s published materials and interviews with participants. Despite the strong criticism, some alumni benefitted from the program. For collections on social history, urban history, history of childhood, and race in the US. -- N. Zmora * Choice *Tobin Miller Shearer investigates how Fresh Air programs’ overwhelmingly white leadership and supporters reckoned with race during the period of demographic transition between 1939 and 1979... Two Weeks Every Summer offers us a valuable story about the racial politics and consequences of childhood reform efforts and the role of children in civil rights activism. Shearer’s criticism of Fresh Air reform is convincing, and present day organizations should follow his suggestion to look honestly at their histories. -- Marika Plater, Rutgers University * The Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth *A meticulously researched examination of the "Fresh Air movement" sponsored by newspapers and social service agencies from the 1870s into the present.... One of the strengths of Shearer's narrative is that he is able to shed light on unexamined assumptions about poverty, race, innocence, and the city and its peoples while also providing clear evidence that there were also people who, when faced with unexpected challenges to their tangled generosity, learned something new and constructive.... An impressive and important book. * American Historical Review *This book is a must read for those who may desire an understanding of the sojourn experiences of children who were selected to participate in the Fresh Air programs during a turbulent era in America's history. Through the author's telescopic lens of archival evidence and oral histories, readers are offered glimpse of those telling experiences, in particular, the last chapter that provided oral histories from two Fresh Air participants. * The Journal of African American History *Table of ContentsIntroduction: A Reckoning of Childhood, Race, and Neoliberalism1. Knowledge, Girl, Nature: Fresh Air Tensions prior to World War II2. Church, Concrete, Pond: How Innocence Got Disrupted3. Grass, Color, Sass: How the Children Shaped Fresh Air4. Sex, Seven, Sick: How Adults Kept the Children in Check5. Milk, Money, Power: How Fresh Air Sold Its Programs6. Greeting, Gone, Good: Racialized Reunion and Rejection in Fresh AirEpilogue: Changing an Innocence Formula

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Book SynopsisIn Raised under Stalin, Seth Bernstein shows how Stalin's regime provided young people with opportunities as members of the Young Communist League or Komsomol even as it surrounded them with violence, shaping socialist youth culture and socialism more broadly through the threat and experience of war. Informed by declassified materials from post-Soviet archives, as well as films, memoirs, and diaries by and about youth, Raised under Stalin explains the divided status of youth for the Bolsheviks: they were the new people who would someday build communism, the potential soldiers who would defend the USSR, and the hooligans who might undermine it from within. Bernstein explains how, although Soviet revolutionary youth culture began as the preserve of proletarian activists, the Komsomol transformed under Stalin to become a mass organization of moral education; youth became the targets of state repression even as Stalin's regime offered them the opportunity to participate inTrade ReviewSeth Bernstein provides a needed analysis of the history of the Komsomol. * Slavic Review *Raised under Stalin will appeal to scholars interested in youth culture, mobilization regimes, and the interwar period in Europe. * Journal of Modern History *Despite my criticism, this book is a good, although Russian-centered, contribution to the recent debates about the role of the Soviet Komsomol in the history of Soviet youth culture. * Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth *This is a thought-provoking book and the author's new archival research both clarifies and develops the academic literature. * Europe-Asia Studies *Bernstein's study... offers a compelling picture of how young men and (to a lesser extent) women became participants in and symbols of Stalin's revolution. [H]is study will appeal to scholars and students of Stalinism as well as those interested in youth organizations in the authoritarian states of the 1930s—or of the twenty-first century. * American Historical Review *[T]his is a very effective work... Bernstein weaves together archival records of leadership meetings with vignettes from ordinary members with analytical and narrative clarity. I strongly recommend this work to scholars interested in early Soviet social and cultural history, as well as scholars working on youth culture more broadly. * Journal of Contemporary History *Raised under Stalin expands our understanding of this period by bringing together issues of gender, youth, defense and the personal and political relationships that were formed in the Komsomol's ranks. * The Russian Review *Seth Bernstein has made an important contribution to the growing body of scholarship on the Communist Youth League (Komsomol) and Soviet youth more generally. It is a thorough, balanced, and sophisticated study, written in clear and accessible language. Not only specialists in Soviet history, but also scholars of youth and even advanced undergraduates will read it to great benefit. * Canadian-American Slavic Studies *Raised Under Stalin is a well-written account of how millions of Soviet youth were both organized and trained, mobilized and repressed. Bernstein's book is excellent reading for anyone interested in regime-youth relationships, youth organizations, ideologies of youth, the Stalin-era USSR, and World War II from the Soviet perspective. * The Soviet and Post-Soviet Review *Table of ContentsList of Figures Acknowledgments Note on Conventions Introduction 1. Youth in the Stalin Revolution 2. Cultural Revolution from Above 3. Class Dismissed? 4. The Great Terror as a Moral Panic 5. The Rehabilitation of Young Communists 6. A Mass Youth Organization 7. Paramilitary Training on the Eve of War 8. Youth at War Conclusion Appendix of Tables Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisMischa Honeck's Our Frontier Is the World is a provocative account of how the Boy Scouts echoed and enabled American global expansion in the twentieth century.The Boy Scouts of America (BSA) has long been a standard bearer for national identity. The core values of the organization have, since its founding in 1910, shaped what it means to be an American boy and man. As Honeck shows, those masculine values had implications that extended far beyond the borders of the United States. Writing the global back into the history of one of the country's largest youth organizations, Our Frontier Is the World details how the BSA operated as a vehicle of empire from the Progressive Era up to the countercultural moment of the 1960s. American boys and men wearing the Scout uniform never simply hiked local trails to citizenship; they forged ties with their international peers, camped in foreign lands, and started troops on overseas military bases. Scouts traveled to Africa and eTrade ReviewThought-provoking and deeply researched.... Our Frontier Is the World covers much fresh ground. Indeed, Honeck's expansive narrative provides new insights on a wide variety of topics, from the development of mass media to the commodification of Native American culture to the role of youth in waging the Cold War.... Exploring the complex nexus of boyhood and empire, Our Frontier Is the World deftly illuminates the contours of U.S. power. * Journal of Social History *In a richly detailed and researched book, nearly a quarter of the pages are dedicated to sources and citations, providing a history of the BSA while at the same time exploring the evolution of the United States as an imperial power. Honeck provides details, research, and several sources to make his argument. The book presents a complex and intriguing picture of the intersection of a service organization, empire, and identity in the twentieth century... Honeck's fine work chronicles the intentions of the BSA, but it remains an open question as to what the effects were on everyday Scouts. * H-Net *This original and incisive portrait of scouting's shifting global frontiers demonstrates the centrality of this iconic youth organization to the construction and maintenance of U.S. * The Journal of American History *Honeck provides a superbly written and richly detailed history of the Boy Scouts abroad. He fully accomplishes his goal to show that the BSA's agenda neatly dovetailed with U.S. foreign policy in times of crisis by becoming a useful tool from which to sharpen U.S. influence abroad behind the innocent faces of young American boys. * Diplomatic History *Our Frontier Is the World: The Boy Scouts in the Age of American Ascendancy is an expansive examination of the global history of the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) and the organization's role in promoting "American ascendancy" in cultural, political, and even military realms.... Honeck's book is a critical addition to the field * Journal of Southern History *This masterly study of the BSA will appeal to students and scholars of U.S. empire and to anyone invested in understanding how age-related constructs of difference operated within the intertwined national and globalized youthscapes of the tumultuous twentieth century * The Journal of American history *Mischa Honeck's Our Frontier Is the World demonstrates how fields of historiography can fruitfully overlap if not quite merge... In splendidly researched and forcefully argued narrative, standards intertwine in clear view, enlivened by quotations and anecdotes... Thoughtful and sharply worded, this book finds great complexity in its subjects. * American Historical Review *Table of ContentsList of Illustrations Acknowledgements Abbreviations Introduction: The White Boy's Burden 1. Brothers Together: Men, Boys, and the Rejuvenation of Empire 2. From Africa to Antarctica: Expeditions to the Global Frontier 3. A Junior League of Nations: Campfire Diplomacy at the World Jamborees 4. A Brother to All? Scouting and the Problem of Race 5. Youth Marches: Depression, Dictators, and War 6. Are You a Crusader? Raising Cold Warriors 7. Innocents Abroad: Scouting across the U.S. Military Empire Epilogue: The Woes of Aging Appendix: Questionnaire Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisPublic discourse on Asian parenting tends to fixate on ethnic culture as a static value set, disguising the fluidity and diversity of Chinese parenting. Such stereotypes also fail to account for the challenges of raising children in a rapidly modernizing world, full of globalizing values. In Raising Global Families, Pei-Chia Lan examines how ethnic Chinese parents in Taiwan and the United States negotiate cultural differences and class inequality to raise children in the contexts of globalization and immigration. She draws on a uniquely comparative, multisited research model with four groups of parents: middle-class and working-class parents in Taiwan, and middle-class and working-class Chinese immigrants in the Boston area. Despite sharing a similar ethnic cultural background, these parents develop class-specific, context-sensitive strategies for arranging their children's education, care, and discipline, and for coping with uncertainties provoked by their changing surroundings. Lan's cross-Pacific comparison demonstrates that class inequality permeates the fabric of family life, even as it takes shape in different ways across national contexts.Trade Review"Pei-Chia Lan makes an extraordinary contribution to contemporary scholarship on parenting strategies by demonstrating how ethnic culture and social class interact within four different social groups spanning two geographic regions. As she does, she illuminates complex processes such as globalization and transnationalism, making this a superb book for classroom use."—Margaret K. Nelson, author of Parenting Out of Control: Anxious Parents in Uncertain Times"Raising Global Families dispels the myth of the tiger mom, telling a compelling story of parenting that is less about unique cultures than about the forces of globalization. Through thoughtful and meticulous analysis of ethnographic data in transnational contexts, Pei-Chia Lan demonstrates how Chinese parents in Taiwan and the United States cope with their intensified feelings of ambivalence and insecurity and how this surfaces in childrearing. This study advances the understanding of parenting beyond the family and local milieus."—Min Zhou, University of California, Los Angeles"Lan's insightful and skillfully-written book offers an intimate glimpse into the lives of Taiwanese families in Taiwan and the United States who endeavor to raise upwardly-mobile children. This is a must-read for all who seek to understand family, class, and mobility in the age of global capitalism."—Carolyn Chen, University of California, Berkeley"This book is a worthy study not only for "global families" but also for all families.Highly recommended."—CHOICE"Lan's methodological design is ambitious and analytically innovative; it is cross-national, cross-class, and multi-method...Global Families offers an invaluable take on parenting practices...Lan makes a convincing case that future studies of immigrant parenting strategies in the United States must consider these cross-national, cross-class ties in their analyses."––Tiffany J. Huang and Jennifer Lee, Social Forces"Raising Global Families is engaging, and Lan's analysis is detailed and nuanced. The readability and rigorousness of this book make it attractive not only to students and scholars with interests in Migration, Globalization, Pedagogy, Class and Culture, as well as Chinese studies, but also to nonacademic readership, such as policy makers and others who are interested in fostering their children's global competitiveness."––Yu-chin Tseng, China Review International"Raising Global Families dismantles the belief in a blanket Asian parenting culture, showing instead how the practice of parenting varies across social classes and national contexts and transforms over time."—Yn Lê Espiritu, American Journal of Sociology"This is a must-read book for scholars of education, immigration, globalisation and class stratification, as well as any parents, students or educational practitioners who are interested in learning more about unequal childhood and parents' struggles to raise a global child in a transnational context."—Siqi Tu, The Sociological ReviewTable of ContentsIntroduction: Anxious Parents in Global Times 1. Transpacific Flows of Ideas and People 2. Taiwanese Middle Class: Raising Global Children 3. Taiwanese Working Class: Affirming Parental Legitimacy 4. Immigrant Middle Class: Raising Confident Children 5. Immigrant Working Class: Reframing Family Dynamics Conclusion: In Search of Security

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Book SynopsisPublic discourse on Asian parenting tends to fixate on ethnic culture as a static value set, disguising the fluidity and diversity of Chinese parenting. Such stereotypes also fail to account for the challenges of raising children in a rapidly modernizing world, full of globalizing values. In Raising Global Families, Pei-Chia Lan examines how ethnic Chinese parents in Taiwan and the United States negotiate cultural differences and class inequality to raise children in the contexts of globalization and immigration. She draws on a uniquely comparative, multisited research model with four groups of parents: middle-class and working-class parents in Taiwan, and middle-class and working-class Chinese immigrants in the Boston area. Despite sharing a similar ethnic cultural background, these parents develop class-specific, context-sensitive strategies for arranging their children's education, care, and discipline, and for coping with uncertainties provoked by their changing surroundings. Lan's cross-Pacific comparison demonstrates that class inequality permeates the fabric of family life, even as it takes shape in different ways across national contexts.Trade Review"Pei-Chia Lan makes an extraordinary contribution to contemporary scholarship on parenting strategies by demonstrating how ethnic culture and social class interact within four different social groups spanning two geographic regions. As she does, she illuminates complex processes such as globalization and transnationalism, making this a superb book for classroom use."—Margaret K. Nelson, author of Parenting Out of Control: Anxious Parents in Uncertain Times"Raising Global Families dispels the myth of the tiger mom, telling a compelling story of parenting that is less about unique cultures than about the forces of globalization. Through thoughtful and meticulous analysis of ethnographic data in transnational contexts, Pei-Chia Lan demonstrates how Chinese parents in Taiwan and the United States cope with their intensified feelings of ambivalence and insecurity and how this surfaces in childrearing. This study advances the understanding of parenting beyond the family and local milieus."—Min Zhou, University of California, Los Angeles"Lan's insightful and skillfully-written book offers an intimate glimpse into the lives of Taiwanese families in Taiwan and the United States who endeavor to raise upwardly-mobile children. This is a must-read for all who seek to understand family, class, and mobility in the age of global capitalism."—Carolyn Chen, University of California, Berkeley"This book is a worthy study not only for "global families" but also for all families.Highly recommended."—CHOICE"Lan's methodological design is ambitious and analytically innovative; it is cross-national, cross-class, and multi-method...Global Families offers an invaluable take on parenting practices...Lan makes a convincing case that future studies of immigrant parenting strategies in the United States must consider these cross-national, cross-class ties in their analyses."––Tiffany J. Huang and Jennifer Lee, Social Forces"Raising Global Families is engaging, and Lan's analysis is detailed and nuanced. The readability and rigorousness of this book make it attractive not only to students and scholars with interests in Migration, Globalization, Pedagogy, Class and Culture, as well as Chinese studies, but also to nonacademic readership, such as policy makers and others who are interested in fostering their children's global competitiveness."––Yu-chin Tseng, China Review International"Raising Global Families dismantles the belief in a blanket Asian parenting culture, showing instead how the practice of parenting varies across social classes and national contexts and transforms over time."—Yn Lê Espiritu, American Journal of Sociology"This is a must-read book for scholars of education, immigration, globalisation and class stratification, as well as any parents, students or educational practitioners who are interested in learning more about unequal childhood and parents' struggles to raise a global child in a transnational context."—Siqi Tu, The Sociological ReviewTable of ContentsIntroduction: Anxious Parents in Global Times 1. Transpacific Flows of Ideas and People 2. Taiwanese Middle Class: Raising Global Children 3. Taiwanese Working Class: Affirming Parental Legitimacy 4. Immigrant Middle Class: Raising Confident Children 5. Immigrant Working Class: Reframing Family Dynamics Conclusion: In Search of Security

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Book SynopsisFrom the US to Nepal, author J. Bradley Wigger travels five countries on three continents to hear children describe their invisible friends—one-hundred-year-old robins and blue dogs, dinosaurs and teapots, pretend families and shape-shifting aliens—companions springing from the deep well of childhood imagination. Drawing on these interviews, as well as a new wave of developmental research, he finds a fluid and flexible quality to the imaginative mind that is central to learning, co-operation, and paradoxically, to real-world rationality. Yet Wigger steps beyond psychological territory to explore the religious significance of the kind of mind that develops relationships with invisible beings. Alongside Cinderella the blue dog, Quack-Quack the duck, and Dino the dinosaur are angels, ancestors, spirits, and gods. What he uncovers is a profound capacity in the religious imagination to see through the surface of reality to more than meets the eye. Punctuated throughout by children's colorful drawings of their see-through interlocutors, the book is highly engaging and alternately endearing, moving, and humorous. Not just for parents or for those who work with children, Invisible Companions will appeal to anyone interested in our mind's creative and spiritual possibilities.Trade Review"Brad Wigger took the time to shed his professorial skin, entering with empathy into the world of children who trusted him enough to reveal themselves. He's now returned from their world to make the invisible visible. Read this book to open your eyes—wide!" -- Jerome Berryman * Godly Play Foundation *"Brad Wigger's artful mix of storytelling and new research captivates the imagination, drawing us into his own journey of discovery. One of the best reads I have enjoyed for some time, his delightful book shares valuable reflections on human uniqueness, early childhood development, and the origins of religion." -- Justin Barrett * Fuller Theological Seminary *"In this captivating book, Brad Wigger's intriguing research on young children's imaginary friends leads us into deep consideration of our remarkable human capacity for social imagination. Whether your primary interest is child development, the cognitive foundations of religion, or human nature itself, you will find much to think about here." -- Peter Gray * author of Free to Learn *"Theologian J. Bradley Wigger interviewed hundreds of children from diverse cultures and found evidence of imaginary friends wherever he looked. His wonderful book documents his quest to understand how these imaginary friends fit into the larger worlds of invisible beings." -- Marjorie Taylor * author of Imaginary Companions and the Children Who Create Them *"Its riveting stories of children and adults aside, this engaging book is ultimately a work of theology that poses a profound question: Is God just another imaginary friend? And, if not, what is the difference?" -- Robert Wuthnow * author of The Left Behind *"[A] charming, insightful, generally persuasive book....The fruits of children's relationships to their invisible friends, as Wigger convincingly presents them, are uncommonly sweet. For that sweetness alone, his book is worth the reading." -- David J. Halperin * Society for Psychical Research *"J. Bradley Wigger challenges us to keep an open mind when it comes to friends that we cannot see. This eloquent book...poses that by having a clearer understanding the imagined world, we have a better grasp on reality." -- Mike Findlay * Psychreg *Table of ContentsContents and AbstractsIntroduction: See-through Knowing chapter abstractThe book opens with the author, twenty years earlier, discovering his daughter has an imaginary friend, Crystal. The scene brings together the origins of his interest in invisible friends (IFs) as both personal and professional. Wonder and curiosity forge the motivation driving the research and book: Why do children make up such companions? And beneath this psychological question is a religious one: Is there a connection between a relationship to an invisible friend and one to an invisible God? The notion of "see-through knowing" is inspired by the name Crystal, which, like the glass, is see-through. The narrative style of the chapter introduces the style of the entire book, which itself is inspired by the children it presents, based upon firsthand interviews. Children take in the world around them and create scenes and characters much as novelists (or narrative nonfiction writers) do. 1Life-Givers chapter abstractThe chapter immediately jumps into descriptions of IFs based upon interviews with children over the course of a year: "Meet Quack Quack." It uses children's own words and drawings to highlight large themes that are explored throughout the book: play and pretense, unpredictability and flexibility, and the intensity of childhood relationships. Addressed as well are the ways the research was carried out, previous studies (which are very limited), ethical considerations, definitions of IFs, and the ways children with IFs were recruited (through parents). It draws upon a notion of saints as "life-givers" to frame the friends and the children who created them. 2Flexibility chapter abstractThe chapter presents more descriptions of IFs, focusing upon the theme of flexibility. Categories such as gender and form are less rigid among the IFs of many of the children: Jeff, a boy, is sometimes a girl, Jeffette; Dino is sometimes a dinosaur and at other times a space alien. Space and time are fluid as well: an IF is here one moment, in Florida the next; another IF is thousands of years old. Even life and death are stretched: an IF died but has returned; another went away to be with an aunt who died; another is a girl's grandfather who died but comes back to comfort her when she's sad. The chapter makes connections to a religious imagination (also not limited by death), which, in turn, sets up a discussion of the work and influence of Freud and the parallels between his view of religion and childhood imagination. 3Logic and Imagination chapter abstractThe chapter makes clear that children know the difference between their imaginary friends and "real-life" people. A prevalent fear stoked by Freud's and Piaget's assumptions about early childhood is that children with IFs may be psychologically troubled. Both believed young children were unable to differentiate fantasy from reality and the developmental task is to move from such confusion to a real-world orientation. Drawing upon a new wave of research into early childhood development, the chapter demonstrates how the Freudian/Piagetian framework got the picture wrong, backwards. Imagination is the developmental achievement and actually aids the development of logic and real-world rationality. 4Sharing chapter abstractBeginning with brothers who share an IF named Baby Bear, the chapter draws out the social dimensions of imaginative play. It provides a brief description of the evolutionary emergence and importance of the deeply social qualities of the human mind. The roots of this mind likely grow in the evolutionary soil of care-taking and food sharing; and the chapter highlights themes of sharing and eating found in the interviews (e.g., IFs eat dinner with the family). The chapter takes the notion of a deeply social mind even deeper and makes soft connections to the theme of sharing and eating in religion. 5Wild Mind chapter abstractThe chapter returns to the phenomenon of shapeshifting among some children's IFs. Lucy is a mom, a tiger, a rabbit, a mouse, and more, depending upon the day or hour. But she is still Lucy. Childhood studies of psychological "essentialism" help illumine how and why the essence of Lucy could remain even as her appearance changes. Moreover, the chapter focuses upon play itself in learning and development. When children pretend or imagine, they are "playing with mind." That is, children are playing with the points of view, motivations, and knowledge others have in order to understand the social world with more agility. 6Who Knows What? chapter abstractThe chapter builds a bridge between Parts I and II and provides a more direct discussion of religion. Not only did the author interview children about IFs, he conducted theory-of-mind cognitive tests with them. Theory of mind refers to the ways in which children (or adults) think about the knowledge others possess. "Would Quack Quack know what's in this box if nobody showed him?" The author describes the significance of this research (especially in relation to religion) through his travels and work at the University of Oxford. "Would God know what's in this box?" The results create important challenges to Piaget's theory of development. Primarily, children are not nearly as "concrete" or "egocentric" in thinking as had been thought. They easily think about a mind (like God's) who has never been encountered concretely and can differentiate such a special mind from those of ordinary (limited) humans. 7Ancestors and Angels chapter abstractThe chapter describes interviews conducted among over 300 children in Kenya and Malawi. Over 20% of the Kenyan children had IFs, and over 25% of the children in Malawi did, answering the first question: Do children in developing countries even have IFs? Lack of recreational facilities or toys did not seem to inhibit imagination. Using theory-of-mind tests, the author asked not only about an IF or Christian God in Kenya but about the ancestors and the Sun (both important to the local culture) as well. In Malawi, children were asked about the minds of spirits and angels as well as Allah (among Muslims) and God (among Christians). Results showed strong similarities between the ways children in Kenya, Malawi, and the US think about ordinary and extraordinary minds, including the minds of IFs. 8Gods and Godsibbs chapter abstractThe chapter describes interviews in Nepal (Hindu and Buddhist) and the Dominican Republic (Christian). Only 5% of Nepali children had IFs, while in the DR over a third had them. Reasons for the differences are explored, but generally there seems to be a cultural emphasis upon realism in Nepal that discourages fantasy and imagination. Nonetheless, children in this polytheistic culture tend to think of the minds of gods and goddesses in a way similar to the way children in monotheistic cultures think of God's mind. The deities know in extraordinary ways. In the DR, over a third of the children described IFs and drew pictures of them. In the DR, theory-of-mind results challenge even further Piaget's theory of childhood egocentrism. The chapter turns to evolutionary theories of gossip as a suggestive angle on IFs and our deeply social, if not religious natures. 9Original Knowing chapter abstractThe chapter explores, from an evolutionary perspective, the type of mind that can imagine, and it focuses upon the power of a "social imagination" that not only learns but intentionally teaches and cooperates, which is unique among primates. The capacity leads to "accumulated cultural learning" and the vast differences between humans and others (especially chimps) despite being so similar in DNA makeup. The chapter makes a moral point that our cognition and cooperation do not make us inherently better, but make us dangerous. The temptation is to reduce others and claim our own beliefs ultimate. Religion can do this too. But religion can also resist the temptation and stoke the ability to recognize the irreducible nature of others, the world. Religion can stoke wonder. 10Friends of God chapter abstractThe chapter opens with a friend who has imaginary conversations with his late father (over coffee). It looks at the parallels between novelists with their characters and children with IFs. But the chapter uses these to raise the big question: Are they real? This leads to the question, Is God just an imaginary friend? Some evolutionary psychologists use theory of mind to explain (away) religion. The chapter acknowledges the possible truth of the claim but also some shortcomings: one philosophical (it does not wrestle with why there is a world at all), the other psychological (it does not address the prevalence of unbelief or skepticism even among the religious). Ultimately, drawing upon Jewish mysticism, the chapter turns the question around, raising the possibility that we are God's imaginary friends, born of the Creator's imagination (like an author) for the sake of relationship.

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Book SynopsisIn the decades directly following the Holocaust, American Jewish leaders anxiously debated how to preserve and produce what they considered authentic Jewish culture, fearful that growing affluence and suburbanization threatened the future of Jewish life. Many communal educators and rabbis contended that without educational interventions, Judaism as they understood it would disappear altogether. They pinned their hopes on residential summer camps for Jewish youth: institutions that sprang up across the U.S. in the postwar decades as places for children and teenagers to socialize, recreate, and experience Jewish culture. Adults' fears, hopes, and dreams about the Jewish future inflected every element of camp life, from the languages they taught to what was encouraged romantically and permitted sexually. But adult plans did not constitute everything that occurred at camp: children and teenagers also shaped these sleepaway camps to mirror their own desires and interests and decided whether to accept or resist the ideas and ideologies their camp leaders promoted. Focusing on the lived experience of campers and camp counselors, The Jews of Summer demonstrates how a cultural crisis birthed a rite of passage that remains a significant influence in American Jewish life.Trade Review"The Jews of Summer is an important contribution to the study of postwar Jewish life. Sandra Fox's engaging and highly readable study of Jewish summer camping offers its fullest and most complex analysis, taking readers into every facet of Jewish camping. An original and essential contribution."—Riv-Ellen Prell, University of Minnesota"Rare is the book that is scholarly and entertaining, but The Jews of Summer is just that. Transporting the reader into the rhythms and romances of summer camp, Sandra Fox offers a deeply compelling lens into the profound and often generative ambivalences of postwar American Jewish life."—Lila Corwin Berman, Temple University"Though Jewish camping has roots going back to the Progressive Era, it really came into its golden age, along with American Judaism itself, in the postwar era. Jewish summer camp became not just a place to spend a summer, but a place to learnhowto be Jewish, as well as an ideological proving ground for the American Jewish future. "All of this is wonderfully explored inThe Jews of Summer: Summer Camp and Jewish Culture in Postwar America."—Rokhl Kafrissen, Tablet"The Jews of Summer is an essential and engaging addition to scholarship on Jewish camping. Summer is an appropriate season in which to read it—but any time of year will yield the same rewards."—Emily Schneider, Jewish Book Council"The Jews of Summer presents a rich historical narrative largely gleaned from camp archives and alumni interviews.... Not the least of its strengths is a compelling, multigenerational narrative about the importance of summer camp in postwar Jewish culture, an age of abundance that lasted from the 1940s until the mid-1970s."—Yeshua G. B. Tolle, Jewish Review of Books"Well-researched, with some wry photos (e.g., counselor dressed up as David Ben Gurion), this book offers a nostalgic glimpse into a part of American-Jewish history."—Hallie Cantor, Association of Jewish Libraries ReviewsTable of ContentsIntroduction: The Jewish Summer Camp: Between Fantasy and Reality 1. "Under Optimum Conditions": American Jews and the Rise of the Summer Camp 2. A Matter of Time: Constructing Camp Life for "Creative Survival" 3. Jews Playing Games: Role-Play, Sociodrama, and Color War 4. "A Little Suffering Goes a Long Way": Tisha B'Av, Ghetto Day, and the Shadow of the Holocaust 5. The Language Cure: Embracing and Evolving Yiddishism and Hebraism 6. "Is This What You Call Being Free?" Power and Youth Culture in the Camper Republic 7. Summer Flings and Fuzzy Rings: Camper Romance, Erotic Zionism, and Intermarriage Anxiety 8. Jewish Camping Post-Postwar Conclusion

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Book SynopsisGrounded in extensive interviews, longitudinal methods, historical analysis, and archival work, Mikaela Luttrell-Rowland shows how two distinct groups of working young people in Lima, Peru have become political protagonists, resisting and critiquing the daily inequality and injustice they face. She details the ways these young people interpret and address a range of issues affecting their lives—from environmental degradation to second-rate public facilities, gender-based violence to dangerous working conditions—and reveals a range of ways they make sense of their systematic marginalization and their own labor, and in doing so, how they navigate everyday state violence. By attending to the affect, longing, and desires that animate these young people's politics, Luttrell-Rowland conveys the meaning of their lives and work in an economy that invokes their subjectivity and rights while rendering them non-participatory subjects. Though the lives of young people are often imagined as far from politics, these "political children" expose the contradictions of public policy narratives in which the Peruvian state is cast as a neutral site for engagement and action. Through their criticism and activism, the young people in this book demonstrate that such narratives divorce state power from the very places in which it is experienced as structural violence.Trade Review"This powerful ethnography provides a rich account of how the Peruvian state is lived, felt, and understood, demonstrating just how much we can learn when we really listen to children. Through a careful and sensitive analysis of their words and drawings, Mikaela Luttrell-Rowland sheds new light on the enduring legacies of state violence, the affective dimensions of state power, and the neoliberal dynamics of disinvestment and depoliticization. By engaging with two different groups of working children, one organized as a social movement and one not, Luttrell-Rowland reveals how all children—not just those who are activists—are political children."—Jessica K. Taft, University of California, Santa Cruz"In her clear yet nuanced analysis of state power, Mikaela Luttrell-Rowland masterfully foregrounds the political subjectivity and demands of youth. Political Children is a valuable contribution to our understanding of youth as agents and of the contradictions embedded in living in and fighting against injustices informed by legacies of colonialism, war, and economic inequities."—M. Cristina Alcalde, Miami University"From the first to the last page, Political Children makes a powerful call for us to stop, and to listen properly, to what marginalised children have to say about interlocking forms of environmental, structural, historical, and political violence. Zooming in on Lima, Perú but equally relevant to many other settings in the Global South and beyond, the book is a testament to the way in whichin-depth interviews, longitudinal ethnographic fieldwork and archival materials can all be harnessed to give agency to children while delivering insights into both the working of state power and the experience of translocal patterns of capital and environmental inequity. Far from being the silent receivers of rights, or just belonging to their families and hence located 'far from politics', Political Children breaks new ground in demonstrating that children are indeed the carriers of key political insights, which they articulate not simply in the mainstream language of rights but also inthe affective language of longing and desire. Methodologically impressive and theoretically sophisticated, Political Children is a must-read to overcome unexamined assumptions about children and learn what powerful socio-legal research can uncover if we stop and listen to them."—Luis Eslava, Kent Law School"As a lawyer and law professor, Luttrell-Rowland brings a different perspective than that of a typical social scientist to this study of working young people in Lima, Peru.... Recommended."—D. L. Browman, CHOICETable of ContentsContents and Abstracts

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Book SynopsisIn the decades directly following the Holocaust, American Jewish leaders anxiously debated how to preserve and produce what they considered authentic Jewish culture, fearful that growing affluence and suburbanization threatened the future of Jewish life. Many communal educators and rabbis contended that without educational interventions, Judaism as they understood it would disappear altogether. They pinned their hopes on residential summer camps for Jewish youth: institutions that sprang up across the U.S. in the postwar decades as places for children and teenagers to socialize, recreate, and experience Jewish culture. Adults' fears, hopes, and dreams about the Jewish future inflected every element of camp life, from the languages they taught to what was encouraged romantically and permitted sexually. But adult plans did not constitute everything that occurred at camp: children and teenagers also shaped these sleepaway camps to mirror their own desires and interests and decided whether to accept or resist the ideas and ideologies their camp leaders promoted. Focusing on the lived experience of campers and camp counselors, The Jews of Summer demonstrates how a cultural crisis birthed a rite of passage that remains a significant influence in American Jewish life.Trade Review"The Jews of Summer is an important contribution to the study of postwar Jewish life. Sandra Fox's engaging and highly readable study of Jewish summer camping offers its fullest and most complex analysis, taking readers into every facet of Jewish camping. An original and essential contribution."—Riv-Ellen Prell, University of Minnesota"Rare is the book that is scholarly and entertaining, but The Jews of Summer is just that. Transporting the reader into the rhythms and romances of summer camp, Sandra Fox offers a deeply compelling lens into the profound and often generative ambivalences of postwar American Jewish life."—Lila Corwin Berman, Temple University"Though Jewish camping has roots going back to the Progressive Era, it really came into its golden age, along with American Judaism itself, in the postwar era. Jewish summer camp became not just a place to spend a summer, but a place to learnhowto be Jewish, as well as an ideological proving ground for the American Jewish future. "All of this is wonderfully explored inThe Jews of Summer: Summer Camp and Jewish Culture in Postwar America."—Rokhl Kafrissen, Tablet"The Jews of Summer is an essential and engaging addition to scholarship on Jewish camping. Summer is an appropriate season in which to read it—but any time of year will yield the same rewards."—Emily Schneider, Jewish Book Council"The Jews of Summer presents a rich historical narrative largely gleaned from camp archives and alumni interviews.... Not the least of its strengths is a compelling, multigenerational narrative about the importance of summer camp in postwar Jewish culture, an age of abundance that lasted from the 1940s until the mid-1970s."—Yeshua G. B. Tolle, Jewish Review of Books"Well-researched, with some wry photos (e.g., counselor dressed up as David Ben Gurion), this book offers a nostalgic glimpse into a part of American-Jewish history."—Hallie Cantor, Association of Jewish Libraries ReviewsTable of ContentsIntroduction: The Jewish Summer Camp: Between Fantasy and Reality 1. "Under Optimum Conditions": American Jews and the Rise of the Summer Camp 2. A Matter of Time: Constructing Camp Life for "Creative Survival" 3. Jews Playing Games: Role-Play, Sociodrama, and Color War 4. "A Little Suffering Goes a Long Way": Tisha B'Av, Ghetto Day, and the Shadow of the Holocaust 5. The Language Cure: Embracing and Evolving Yiddishism and Hebraism 6. "Is This What You Call Being Free?" Power and Youth Culture in the Camper Republic 7. Summer Flings and Fuzzy Rings: Camper Romance, Erotic Zionism, and Intermarriage Anxiety 8. Jewish Camping Post-Postwar Conclusion

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Book SynopsisGrounded in extensive interviews, longitudinal methods, historical analysis, and archival work, Mikaela Luttrell-Rowland shows how two distinct groups of working young people in Lima, Peru have become political protagonists, resisting and critiquing the daily inequality and injustice they face. She details the ways these young people interpret and address a range of issues affecting their lives—from environmental degradation to second-rate public facilities, gender-based violence to dangerous working conditions—and reveals a range of ways they make sense of their systematic marginalization and their own labor, and in doing so, how they navigate everyday state violence. By attending to the affect, longing, and desires that animate these young people's politics, Luttrell-Rowland conveys the meaning of their lives and work in an economy that invokes their subjectivity and rights while rendering them non-participatory subjects. Though the lives of young people are often imagined as far from politics, these "political children" expose the contradictions of public policy narratives in which the Peruvian state is cast as a neutral site for engagement and action. Through their criticism and activism, the young people in this book demonstrate that such narratives divorce state power from the very places in which it is experienced as structural violence.Trade Review"This powerful ethnography provides a rich account of how the Peruvian state is lived, felt, and understood, demonstrating just how much we can learn when we really listen to children. Through a careful and sensitive analysis of their words and drawings, Mikaela Luttrell-Rowland sheds new light on the enduring legacies of state violence, the affective dimensions of state power, and the neoliberal dynamics of disinvestment and depoliticization. By engaging with two different groups of working children, one organized as a social movement and one not, Luttrell-Rowland reveals how all children—not just those who are activists—are political children."—Jessica K. Taft, University of California, Santa Cruz"In her clear yet nuanced analysis of state power, Mikaela Luttrell-Rowland masterfully foregrounds the political subjectivity and demands of youth. Political Children is a valuable contribution to our understanding of youth as agents and of the contradictions embedded in living in and fighting against injustices informed by legacies of colonialism, war, and economic inequities."—M. Cristina Alcalde, Miami University"From the first to the last page, Political Children makes a powerful call for us to stop, and to listen properly, to what marginalised children have to say about interlocking forms of environmental, structural, historical, and political violence. Zooming in on Lima, Perú but equally relevant to many other settings in the Global South and beyond, the book is a testament to the way in whichin-depth interviews, longitudinal ethnographic fieldwork and archival materials can all be harnessed to give agency to children while delivering insights into both the working of state power and the experience of translocal patterns of capital and environmental inequity. Far from being the silent receivers of rights, or just belonging to their families and hence located 'far from politics', Political Children breaks new ground in demonstrating that children are indeed the carriers of key political insights, which they articulate not simply in the mainstream language of rights but also inthe affective language of longing and desire. Methodologically impressive and theoretically sophisticated, Political Children is a must-read to overcome unexamined assumptions about children and learn what powerful socio-legal research can uncover if we stop and listen to them."—Luis Eslava, Kent Law School"As a lawyer and law professor, Luttrell-Rowland brings a different perspective than that of a typical social scientist to this study of working young people in Lima, Peru.... Recommended."—D. L. Browman, CHOICETable of ContentsContents and Abstracts

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Book SynopsisIn 1938 and 1939, some 10,000 children and young people fled to the UK to escape Nazi persecution. Known as the ‘Kindertransport’, this effort has long been hailed as a wartime success story – but there are uncomfortable truths at its heart. The Kindertransport was a complex visa waiver scheme, and its organizers did not necessarily act with altruism. The British government required a guarantee to indemnify itself against any expenses, and refused to admit the child refugees’ parents. The selection criteria prioritized those who were likely to make the best contribution to society, rather than the most urgent cases. And some children and young people were placed in unsuitable homes, where many arrangements irrevocably broke down. Written with striking empathy and insight, Andrea Hammel’s expert analysis casts new light on what really happened during the Kindertransport. Revelatory and impassioned, this book will be essential reading for anyone interested in the history of migration and refugees, and offers thought-provoking lessons for how we might make life easier for children fleeing conflict today.Trade Review‘Andrea Hammel’s overview of the Kindertransport is a remarkable achievement. With compassion and sensitivity, the author has managed to convey the full complexities of the scheme and has put at the forefront the experiences of these Jewish refugee children which ranged from love and understanding to economic and sexual abuse.’Tony Kushner, Parkes Institute, University of Southampton‘An impressively well researched account that is at once fascinating and deeply moving. Hammel skilfully balances compassion and insight to lay bare the detail of the Kindertransport in a remarkably detailed and nuanced way. It is sure to become a definitive text on the subject.’James Bulgin, Head of Public History, Imperial War Museums‘The Kindertransport…has always been regarded as a symbol of British generosity towards those in peril and seeking asylum. But it was all rather more complicated, as Andrea Hammel sets out to show.’The Spectator‘Andrea Hammel aims to dig deeper and remind the world that the story does not quite sparkle as brightly as some, particularly successive British governments, have wished to portray.’The Irish Times‘a model for good history writing... Hammel takes nothing for granted but examines all aspects with relentless precision. She gives us a welcome guide to critical thinking along with a compelling story.’New York Journal of BooksTable of Contents1. Myth 2. Persecution 3. Escape 4. Organisation 5. Placements 6. War 7. Death 8. Together/Apart 9. Life 10. Memory

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Book SynopsisUntil recently, scholars believed that African American children’s literature did not exist before 1900. Now, Who Writes for Black Children? opens the door to a rich archive of largely overlooked literature read by black children. This volume’s combination of analytic essays, bibliographic materials, and primary texts offers alternative histories for early African American literary studies and children’s literature studies.From poetry written by a slave for a plantation school to joyful “death biographies” of African Americans in the antebellum North to literature penned by African American children themselves, Who Writes for Black Children? presents compelling new definitions of both African American literature and children’s literature. Editors Katharine Capshaw and Anna Mae Duane bring together a rich collection of essays that argue for children as an integral part of the nineteenth-century black community and offer alternative ways to look at the relationship between children and adults. Including two bibliographic essays that provide a list of texts for future research as well as an extensive selection of hard-to-find primary texts, Who Writes for Black Children? broadens our ideas of authorship, originality, identity, and political formations. In the process, the volume adds new texts to the canon of African American literature while providing a fresh perspective on our desire for the literary origin stories that create canons in the first place. Contributors: Karen Chandler, U of Louisville; Martha J. Cutter, U of Connecticut; LuElla D’Amico, Whitworth U; Brigitte Fielder, U of Wisconsin–Madison; Eric Gardner, Saginaw Valley State U; Mary Niall Mitchell, U of New Orleans; Angela Sorby, Marquette U; Ivy Linton Stabell, Iona College; Valentina K. Tikoff, DePaul U; Laura Wasowicz; Courtney Weikle-Mills, U of Pittsburgh; Nazera Sadiq Wright, U of Kentucky.Trade Review"Was any literature written specifically for black children living before 1900 in the Western Hemisphere? By posing this question, Capshaw and Duane force a reckoning with a gap in children’s literature studies that is predicated on the assumption that slavery invalidated a space for black children to consume literature."—V. A. Murrenus Pilmaier, University of Wisconsin-Sheboygan"The volume’s strength lies in the interdisciplinary perspectives it provides on both African American children’s literature and the experiences of African American child-readers."—The Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth"Striking the hard-to-accomplish balance between in-process scholarly exploration and textbook framing, this collection manages not only to profess but also, impressively, to teach."—MELUS"Who Writes for Black Children? is a compelling collection of scholarly essays and primary material that will be valuable to anyone interested in the history of childhood—or in book history, reading and reception history, materiality, ephemera, or interpretation. Examining poetry, fiction, biography, illustrations, periodicals, friendship albums, pamphlets, marginalia, and more, the collection analyzes the goals and rhetorical strategies of diverse genres published for African American children and (perhaps) read by them."—Journal of American HistoryTable of ContentsContentsIntroductionPart I. Locating Readers1. Conjuring Readers: Antebellum African American Children’s PoetryAngela Sorby2. Free the Children: Jupiter Hammon and the Origin of African American Children’s LiteratureCourtney Weikle-Mills 3. “Ye Are Builders”: Child Readers in Frances Harper’s Vision of an Inclusive Black PoetryKaren ChandlerPart II: Schooling, Textuality, and Literacies4. Madame Couvent’s Legacy: Free Children of Color as Historians in Antebellum New OrleansMary Niall Mitchell5. Black Childhood Innocence in Susan Paul and Ann Plato’s Antebellum Children’s BiographiesIvy Linton Stabell6. Equiano as Role Model for African American Children: Abigail Field Mott’s Life and Adventures of Olaudah Equiano and White Northern Abolitionism in the 1820sValentina K. Tikoff7. The Child’s Illustrated Anti-Slavery Talking Book: Abigail Mott’s Abridgment of Olaudah Equiano’s Interesting Narrative for African American ChildrenMartha J. CutterPart III: Defining African American Children’s Literature: Critical Crossovers8. “Our Hope Is in the Rising Generation”: Locating African American Children’s Literature in the Colored American’s “Children Department” (1840-1841)Nazera Sadiq Wright9. “No Rights That Any Body Is Bound to Respect”: Pets, Race, and African American Child ReadersBrigitte Fielder10. Finding God’s Way: Amelia Johnson’s Clarence and Corrine as a Path to Religious Resistance for African American ChildrenLuElla D’AmicoPart IV: Bibliographic Essays11. Nuggets from the Field: The Roots of African American Children’s Literature, 1780-1866Laura Wasowicz12. Children’s Literature in the AME Christian Recorder: An Initial Comparative Bio-Bibliography for May 1862 and April 1873Eric GardnerAcknowledgmentsAppendixContributorsIndex

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Book SynopsisExploring how the figure of the “wild child” in contemporary fiction grapples with contemporary cultural anxieties about reproductive ethics and the future of humanity In the eighteenth century, Western philosophy positioned the figure of “the child” at the border between untamed nature and rational adulthood. Contemporary cultural anxieties about the ethics and politics of reproductive choice and the crisis of parental responsibility have freighted this liminal figure with new meaning in twenty-first-century narratives.In Wild Child, Naomi Morgenstern explores depictions of children and their adult caregivers in extreme situations—ranging from the violence of slavery and sexual captivity to accidental death, mass murder, torture, and global apocalypse—in such works as Toni Morrison’s A Mercy, Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, Lionel Shriver’s We Need to Talk about Kevin, Emma Donoghue’s Room, and Denis Villeneuve’s film Prisoners. Morgenstern shows how, in such narratives, “wild” children function as symptoms of new ethical crises and existential fears raised by transformations in the technology and politics of reproduction and by increased ethical questions about the very decision to reproduce. In the face of an uncertain future that no longer confirms the confidence of patriarchal humanism, such narratives displace or project present-day apprehensions about maternal sacrifice and paternal protection onto the wildness of children in a series of hyperbolically violent scenes.Urgent and engaging, Wild Child offers the only extended consideration of how twenty-first-century fiction has begun to imagine the decision to reproduce and the ethical challenges of posthumanist parenting.Trade Review"Your child isn’t civilized. Neither are you. Expect the child to be more productively destructive and survivalist than you imagined, showing us to be the techno-relational-vulnerable animals that we are, strange to the core in crisis and change. Also expect that you won’t find a smarter, more forthright, and beautifully nuanced guide to these thoughts than Naomi Morgenstern. Impressive and persuasive."—Kathryn Bond Stockton, author of The Queer Child, or Growing Sideways in the Twentieth Century"Wild Child is a brilliant and thoroughly engaging study of reproductive ethics and the ethics of parenting in narratives of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Naomi Morgenstern's command of theoretical texts, both philosophical and psychoanalytic, is prodigious, and her writing style is vibrant—at once theoretically complex and alive with personal twists and turns of language."—Jean Wyatt, author of Love and Narrative Form in Toni Morrison's Later NovelsTable of ContentsContentsIntroduction: The Posthumanist Wild Child1. Is There a Space of Maternal Ethics? Emma Donoghue’s Room2. Postapocalyptic Responsibility: Patriarchy at the End of the World in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road3. Maternal Love/Maternal Violence: Inventing Ethics in Toni Morrison’s A Mercy4. “Monstrous Decision”: Destruction and Relation in Lionel Shriver’s We Need to Talk about Kevin5. “Dis-ap-peared”: Endangered Children in Denis Villeneuve’s Prisoners and Alice Munro’s “Miles City, Montana”Afterword: The Pretense of the Human from Victor of Aveyron to Nim ChimpskyAcknowledgmentsNotesIndex

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Book SynopsisExploring how the figure of the “wild child” in contemporary fiction grapples with contemporary cultural anxieties about reproductive ethics and the future of humanity In the eighteenth century, Western philosophy positioned the figure of “the child” at the border between untamed nature and rational adulthood. Contemporary cultural anxieties about the ethics and politics of reproductive choice and the crisis of parental responsibility have freighted this liminal figure with new meaning in twenty-first-century narratives.In Wild Child, Naomi Morgenstern explores depictions of children and their adult caregivers in extreme situations—ranging from the violence of slavery and sexual captivity to accidental death, mass murder, torture, and global apocalypse—in such works as Toni Morrison’s A Mercy, Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, Lionel Shriver’s We Need to Talk about Kevin, Emma Donoghue’s Room, and Denis Villeneuve’s film Prisoners. Morgenstern shows how, in such narratives, “wild” children function as symptoms of new ethical crises and existential fears raised by transformations in the technology and politics of reproduction and by increased ethical questions about the very decision to reproduce. In the face of an uncertain future that no longer confirms the confidence of patriarchal humanism, such narratives displace or project present-day apprehensions about maternal sacrifice and paternal protection onto the wildness of children in a series of hyperbolically violent scenes.Urgent and engaging, Wild Child offers the only extended consideration of how twenty-first-century fiction has begun to imagine the decision to reproduce and the ethical challenges of posthumanist parenting.Trade Review"Your child isn’t civilized. Neither are you. Expect the child to be more productively destructive and survivalist than you imagined, showing us to be the techno-relational-vulnerable animals that we are, strange to the core in crisis and change. Also expect that you won’t find a smarter, more forthright, and beautifully nuanced guide to these thoughts than Naomi Morgenstern. Impressive and persuasive."—Kathryn Bond Stockton, author of The Queer Child, or Growing Sideways in the Twentieth Century"Wild Child is a brilliant and thoroughly engaging study of reproductive ethics and the ethics of parenting in narratives of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Naomi Morgenstern's command of theoretical texts, both philosophical and psychoanalytic, is prodigious, and her writing style is vibrant—at once theoretically complex and alive with personal twists and turns of language."—Jean Wyatt, author of Love and Narrative Form in Toni Morrison's Later NovelsTable of ContentsContentsIntroduction: The Posthumanist Wild Child1. Is There a Space of Maternal Ethics? Emma Donoghue’s Room2. Postapocalyptic Responsibility: Patriarchy at the End of the World in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road3. Maternal Love/Maternal Violence: Inventing Ethics in Toni Morrison’s A Mercy4. “Monstrous Decision”: Destruction and Relation in Lionel Shriver’s We Need to Talk about Kevin5. “Dis-ap-peared”: Endangered Children in Denis Villeneuve’s Prisoners and Alice Munro’s “Miles City, Montana”Afterword: The Pretense of the Human from Victor of Aveyron to Nim ChimpskyAcknowledgmentsNotesIndex

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Book SynopsisA groundbreaking twentieth-century history of transgender children With transgender rights front and center in American politics, media, and culture, the pervasive myth still exists that today’s transgender children are a brand new generation—pioneers in a field of new obstacles and hurdles. Histories of the Transgender Child shatters this myth, uncovering a previously unknown twentieth-century history when transgender children not only existed but preexisted the term transgender and its predecessors, playing a central role in the medicalization of trans people, and all sex and gender.Beginning with the early 1900s when children with “ambiguous” sex first sought medical attention, to the 1930s when transgender people began to seek out doctors involved in altering children’s sex, to the invention of the category gender, and finally the 1960s and ’70s when, as the field institutionalized, transgender children began to take hormones, change their names, and even access gender confirmation, Julian Gill-Peterson reconstructs the medicalization and racialization of children’s bodies. Throughout, they foreground the racial history of medicine that excludes black and trans of color children through the concept of gender’s plasticity, placing race at the center of their analysis and at the center of transgender studies.Until now, little has been known about early transgender history and life and its relevance to children. Using a wealth of archival research from hospitals and clinics, including incredible personal letters from children to doctors, as well as scientific and medical literature, this book reaches back to the first half of the twentieth century—a time when the category transgender was not available but surely existed, in the lives of children and parents.Trade Review"Histories of the Transgender Child is a tour de force contribution to transgender studies, tracing little-noticed pathways from the past toward convergences that increasingly take center stage in the next field. An elegant combination of sophisticated theorization with equally sophisticated attention to archival and historical materials, this is one of the best books in trans studies in recent years."—Susan Stryker, University of Arizona"Jules Gill-Peterson excavates the history of medicine, introducing readers to a century’s worth of gender nonconforming youth. This remarkable book is not merely a backward glance; it offers an urgent call to reimagine trans as a form of self-knowledge children can hold and for an ethics of care that focuses on affirmation."—Tey Meadow, author of Trans Kids"Meticulously researched and compellingly argued, this book is a welcome addition to a number of fields, including trans of color critique, childhood studies, and queer and trans history."—C. Riley Snorton, author of Black on Both Sides"This work fills a gap in queer history; older trans, intersex, and nonbinary people who work through the dense, theoretical prose may find their experiences reflected in Gill-Peterson’s history, and younger ones may discover that their “uncovering of a century of untold stories” provides a tether to an underexplored legacy."—Publishers Weekly "You have to start somewhere. Indeed, few things begin in a vacuum: you need an idea, then experiments and practice to create a masterpiece. Nothing magically just appears. And in the new book “Histories of the Transgender Child” by Jules Gill-Peterson,you’ll see that that’s true, too, about knowledge and change." —South Florida Gay News "For children’s literature scholars who work on gender and sexuality, this book is essential reading for its insights that transgender children are not new and that binary sex and gender are extremely recent and fragile ideas reliant on a dehumanizing, racially coded conceptualization of the child as plasticity." —The Lion and the UnicornTable of ContentsPrefaceIntroduction: Toward a Trans-of-Color Critique of Medicine1. The Racial Plasticity of Gender and the Child2. Before Transsexuality: The Transgender Child from the 1900s to the 1930s3. Sex in Crisis: Intersex Children in the 1950s and the Invention of Gender4. From Johns Hopkins to the Midwest: Transgender Childhood in the 1960s5. Transgender Boyhood, Race, and Puberty in the 1970sConclusion: How to Bring Your Kids Up TransAcknowledgmentsAbbreviationsNotesIndex

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Book SynopsisExplores childhood in relation to blackness, transfeminism, queerness, and deportability to interrogate what “the child” makes possibleThe concept of childhood contains many contested and ambivalent meanings that have extraordinary implications, particularly for those staking their claim for belonging and justice on the wish for inclusion within it. In Ambivalent Childhoods, Jacob Breslow examines contemporary U.S. social justice movements (including Black Lives Matter, transfeminism, queer youth activism, and antideportation movements) to discover and reveal how childhood operates within and against them.Ambivalent Childhoods brings together critical race, trans, feminist, queer, critical migration, and psychoanalytic theories to explore the role of childhood in shaping and challenging the disposability of young black life, the steadfastness of the gender binary, the queer life of children’s desires, and the precarious status of migrants. Through an engagement with“the psychic life of the child” that combines theoretical discussions of childhood, blackness, transfeminism, and deportability with critical readings of films, narrative, images, and social justice movements, Breslow demonstrates how childhood requires sustained attention as a complex and ambivalent site for contesting the workings of power, not only for the young. Ambivalent Childhoods is a forward-thinking and intersectional analysis of how childhood affects activism, national belonging, and the violence directed against queer, trans, and racialized people. Trade Review "This is a landmark achievement. Rigorous and lyrical, urgently political and achingly personal, Ambivalent Childhoods braids together scholarly approaches to childhood that center Blackness, transgender, queer sexuality, and migration in order to show how each twist through ambivalent, fraught, and necessary claims to the protections of childhood innocence."—Rebekah Sheldon, author of The Child to Come: Life after the Human Catastrophe "A highly engaging, timely, and forward-thinking interdisciplinary and intersectional exploration of how childhood shapes activism, national belonging, and the violence transacted against queer, trans, and racialized people. Jacob Breslow successfully weaves these differing fields and movements together to show us something vital but seemingly unnoticed about the role of the psychic life of the child in American fantasies about the political and citizenship."—Jules Gill-Peterson, author of Histories of the Transgender Child "Both deeply informative and good to think with."—Children’s Literature Association Quarterly "[Breslow] demonstrates one way to occupy the ambivalence of childhood, attending to its harmful effects while valuing its psychic power to sustain us. Ambivalent Childhoods invites us to engage with that ambivalence and the speculative futures it makes possible."—American Literary History Table of ContentsContentsIntroduction: The Wish for Childhood1. Disavowing Black Childhood: Trayvon Martin, Adolescent Citizenship, and Anti-Blackness2. Transphobia as Projection: Trans Childhoods and the Psychic Brutality of Gender3. Desiring the Child: Queerness, Motherhood, and the Analyst4. Undocumented Dream-Work: Intergenerational Migrant Aesthetics and the Parricidal Violence of the BorderAfterword: Ambivalence and Loss AcknowledgmentsNotesBibliographyIndex

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Book SynopsisHow popular debates about the so-called digital generation mediate anxieties about labor and life in twenty-first-century America “The children are our future” goes the adage, a proclamation that simultaneously declares both anxiety as well as hope about youth as the next generation. In The Digital Is Kid Stuff, Josef Nguyen interrogates this ambivalence within discussions about today’s “digital generation” and the future of creativity, an ambivalence that toggles between the techno-pessimism that warns against the harm to children of too much screen time and a techno-utopianism that foresees these “digital natives” leading the way to innovation, economic growth, increased democratization, and national prosperity. Nguyen engages cultural histories of childhood, youth, and creativity through chapters that are each anchored to a particular digital media object or practice. Nguyen narrates the developmental arc of a future creative laborer: from a young kid playing the island fictions of Minecraft, to an older child learning do-it-yourself skills while reading Make magazine, to a teenager posting selfies on Instagram, to a young adult creative laborer imagining technological innovations using design fiction. Focusing on the constructions and valorizations of creativity, entrepreneurialism, and technological savvy, Nguyen argues that contemporary culture operates to assuage profound anxieties about—and to defuse valid critiques of—both emerging digital technologies and the precarity of employment for “creative laborers” in twenty-first-century neoliberal America. Trade Review"Josef Nguyen offers a compelling, timely examination of how entangled digital media have become with childhood and creative expression. This is an illuminating and useful read for youth and media researchers, educators, and professionals working in informal education that gets beyond binary thinking about the goods or ills of digital media and instead digs into these forms as play and creative practice."—Carly A. Kocurek, author of Coin-Operated Americans: Rebooting Boyhood at the Video Game Arcade"The Digital Is Kid Stuff is a brilliantly argued, engagingly written, and insightful unraveling of the discursive tensions between youth, digital media, and the neoliberal logics informing how and why we value young people’s capacity for creativity. Josef Nguyen offers a rich contextualization and analysis of the ideologies that shape how contemporary society imagines young people's position within creative economies."—Jacqueline Ryan Vickery, author of Worried About the Wrong Things: Youth, Risk, and Opportunity in the Digital WorldTable of ContentsContentsIntroduction: What We Are to Make of Creative Digital Youth1. Minecraft and the Building Blocks of Creative Individuality2. Make Magazine and the Responsible Risks of DIY Innovation3. Instagram and the Creative Filtering of Authentic Selves4. Design Fiction and the Imagination of Technological FuturesConclusionAcknowledgmentsNotesIndex

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Book SynopsisIn the absence of public provision, many governments rely on the market to meet childcare demand. But who are the actors shaping this market? What work do they do to marketize care? And what does it mean for how childcare is provided? Based on an innovative theoretical framework and an in-depth study of the New Zealand childcare market, Gallagher examines the problematic growth of private, for-profit childcare. Opening the ‘black box’ of childcare markets to closer scrutiny, this book brings to light the complex political, social and economic dynamics behind childcare provisioning.Table of Contents1. Childcare as a Market for Collective Concern 2. Childcare Markets as an Object of Study 3. State-Led Marketization: The Creation of the New Zealand Childcare Market 4. Private Providers, Childcare Labour and the Problem of Finance 5. The Childcare Property Investment Market 6. Childcare Management Software and Data Infrastructures in the Market 7. Conclusion 8. Epilogue: Market Responses to COVID-19

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Book SynopsisIn the absence of public provision, many governments rely on the market to meet childcare demand. But who are the actors shaping this market? What work do they do to marketize care? And what does it mean for how childcare is provided? Based on an innovative theoretical framework and an in-depth study of the New Zealand childcare market, Gallagher examines the problematic growth of private, for-profit childcare. Opening the ‘black box’ of childcare markets to closer scrutiny, this book brings to light the complex political, social and economic dynamics behind childcare provisioning.Table of Contents1. Childcare as a Market for Collective Concern 2. Childcare Markets as an Object of Study 3. State-Led Marketization: The Creation of the New Zealand Childcare Market 4. Private Providers, Childcare Labour and the Problem of Finance 5. The Childcare Property Investment Market 6. Childcare Management Software and Data Infrastructures in the Market 7. Conclusion 8. Epilogue: Market Responses to COVID-19

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Book SynopsisBoats in the Attic is a sweeping, poignant exploration of what it means to be an individual and, in particular, what it means to be a parent of young children, in our current time of crisis. Errands must be run, the radio plays, and the child wants the birthday girl’s balloon—all while sea levels are rising and wild wolves roam the acres of Chernobyl, “developing a cryptography to a century / to which we are not invited.” In this dynamic collection, Powell intersperses lyric flight and prose fragments with metacommentary, nuance, and a beguiling sense of humor. At the same time, these pieces are securely tethered to the material difficulties of being a human in today’s world, where a child must participate in a lockdown drill at his preschool and a dying woman turns to Reddit to fund her efforts to be cryogenetically preserved. Conversations between the speaker and her children trace the beauty and terror of existential indeterminacy: “We begin to consider other planets — / Will they have us?” In a long piece titled “Book of Revelation,” the speaker dreams that “below the bed / is an encyclopedia of lost things,” a phrase that captures the collection’s wide range and its categorizing eye. Powell turns to astronomy, Alice in Wonderland, Millerism, and culinary cruelty, with a uniquely celebratory and elegiac voice, all in an effort to understand the depths, and effects, of the human appetite for pleasure, power, and escape.Table of ContentsI. Missing File #1: Woolly Rhinoceros / Ancient Cavity Tooth | 3 The First Word | 7 Etymology: Heaven | 9 The Great Disappointment, 1844 | 13 Missing File #2: A Few Facts about Bees | 16 The First Deluge: A Found Poem | 18 Mrs. Noah: A Found Poem | 19 Missing File #3: Panthera Leo Leo, Or, A Civics Lesson | 20 The Other, The Other | 26 In the Beginning | 28 II. If We Speak of the Hurricane | 31 After the Birth of the First Child | 33 The Book of Revelation | 34 Upon Turning Forty | 54 Missing File #4: Already We Are Less than Ever Before | 55 III. Missing File #5: The Ortolan Bunting | 63 Missing File #6: Horns-a-Plenty | 66 Conditions | 67 Boats in the Attic | 71 Missing File #7: Nomen Nudum | 72 Notes | 85 Acknowledgments | 89

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Book SynopsisToy Stories: Analyzing the Child in Nineteenth-Century Literature explores the stakes of recurrent depictions of children’s violent, damaging, and tenuously restorative play with objects within a long nineteenth century of fictional and educational writing. As Vanessa Smith shows us, these scenes of aggression and anxiety cannot be squared with the standard picture of domestic childhood across that period. Instead, they seem to attest to the kinds of enactments of infant distress we would normally associate with post-psychoanalytic modernity, creating a ripple effect in the literary texts that nest them: regressing developmental narratives, giving new value to wooden characters, exposing Realism’s solid objects to odd fracture, and troubling distinctions between artificial and authentic interiority. Toy Stories is the first study to take these scenes of anger and overwhelm seriously, challenging received ideas about both the nineteenth century and its literary forms. Radically re-conceiving nineteenth-century childhood and its literary depiction as anticipating the scenes, theories, and methodologies of early child analysis, Toy Stories proposes a shared literary and psychoanalytic discernment about child’s play that in turn provides a deep context for understanding both the “development” of the novel and the keen British uptake of Melanie Klein’s and Anna Freud’s interventions in child therapy. In doing so, the book provides a necessary reframing of the work of Klein and Freud and their fractious disagreement about the interior life of the child and its object-mediated manifestations.Table of ContentsPreface: A Toy Is Being Beaten | ix Introduction: Child’s Play | 1 1 Proper Objects | 27 2 Possible Persons | 54 3 Our Plays | 82 4 Bildung Blocks | 110 Conclusion: Toy Stories | 137 Acknowledgments | 147 Notes | 149 Works Cited | 189 Index | 205

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Book SynopsisA lively exploration into America’s preoccupation with childhood innocence and its corruption In The Drinking Curriculum, Elizabeth Marshall brings the taboo topic of alcohol and childhood into the limelight. Marshall coins the term “the drinking curriculum” to describe how a paradoxical set of cultural lessons about childhood are fueled by adult anxieties and preoccupations. By analyzing popular and widely accessible texts in visual culture—temperance tracts, cartoons, film, advertisements, and public-service announcements—Marshall demonstrates how youth are targets of mixed messages about intoxication. Those messages range from the overtly violent to the humorous, the moralistic to the profane. Offering a critical and, at times, irreverent analysis of dominant protectionist paradigms that sanctify childhood as implicitly innocent, The Drinking Curriculum centers the graphic narratives our culture uses to teach about alcohol, the roots of these pictorial tales in the nineteenth century, and the discursive hangover we nurse into the twenty-first.Table of ContentsIntroduction: Learning to Drink | 1 Lesson One: D is for Drunkard | 15 Lesson Two: No Pets, No Drunks, No Children | 34 Lesson Three: “Friends Don’t Let Friends Drink and Drive” | 49 Lesson Four: It’s Funny When Kids Drink | 63 Lesson Five: Mommy Needs a Cocktail | 80 Final Exam | 99 Acknowledgments | 105 Notes | 107 Index | 129

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Book SynopsisA lively exploration into America’s preoccupation with childhood innocence and its corruption In The Drinking Curriculum, Elizabeth Marshall brings the taboo topic of alcohol and childhood into the limelight. Marshall coins the term “the drinking curriculum” to describe how a paradoxical set of cultural lessons about childhood are fueled by adult anxieties and preoccupations. By analyzing popular and widely accessible texts in visual culture—temperance tracts, cartoons, film, advertisements, and public-service announcements—Marshall demonstrates how youth are targets of mixed messages about intoxication. Those messages range from the overtly violent to the humorous, the moralistic to the profane. Offering a critical and, at times, irreverent analysis of dominant protectionist paradigms that sanctify childhood as implicitly innocent, The Drinking Curriculum centers the graphic narratives our culture uses to teach about alcohol, the roots of these pictorial tales in the nineteenth century, and the discursive hangover we nurse into the twenty-first.Table of ContentsIntroduction: Learning to Drink | 1 Lesson One: D is for Drunkard | 15 Lesson Two: No Pets, No Drunks, No Children | 34 Lesson Three: “Friends Don’t Let Friends Drink and Drive” | 49 Lesson Four: It’s Funny When Kids Drink | 63 Lesson Five: Mommy Needs a Cocktail | 80 Final Exam | 99 Acknowledgments | 105 Notes | 107 Index | 129

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