Description
Book SynopsisThousands of children attended summer camps in twentieth-century Ontario. Did parents simply want a break, or were broader developments at play? The Nurture of Nature explores the history of summer camps and sheds light on a wider phenomenon: the divided consciousness that informs modern assumptions about nature, technology, and identity.
Wall examines how two competing tendencies antimodern nostalgia and modern sensibilities about the landscape, child rearing, and identity played out in the camp's interaction with nature, its class and gendered dimensions, its engagement with emerging ideologies of childhood, and in the politics of race inherent in its Indian programming.
The Nurture of Nature offers a fascinating discussion of the summer camp's contribution to modern social life that will appeal to students and practitioners of the history of childhood, the natural environment, and recreation or anyone who has been packed off to camp and wants to ex
Trade Review
"The Nurture of Nature represents a major study of an important but neglected subject. It is an important contribution to the study of leisure and recreation in Canada, to the understanding of the character of modernity, and to the history of summer camps. - Keith Walden, Department of History, Trent University"
Table of Contents
Foreword: Modernism in Camp: A Wilderness Paradox / Graeme Wynn
Introduction
1 Back to Nature: Escaping the City, Ordering the Wild
2 Socialism for the Rich: Class Formation at the Private Camp
3 "All they need is air": Building Health, Shaping Class at the Fresh Air Camp
4 Making Modern Childhood, the Natural Way: The Camp Experiment with Psychology, Mental Hygiene, and Progressive Education
5 Shaping True Natures in Nature: Camping, Gender, and Sexuality
6 Totem Poles, Tepees, and Token Traditions: "Playing Indian" at Camp
Conclusion: All Antimodern Melts into Modern?
Notes
Bibliography
Index
