5:30-7:30P     W     BH137

Topic: The History of Children in the West
A portion of the above section reserved for majors
H620: Meets with WEUR W605

Our primary focus in this course will be the history of childhood and
children's issues in nineteenth- and twentieth- century Western
societies (Europe and US), though some discussions will inevitably
take us to earlier periods.  We will start off by exploring recent
(and not-so-recent) literature on the place of children in Western
history including discussions of the so-called discovery of childhood.
We will then look at a series of children's issues which might
include: child labor, children and poverty, infant abandonment, the
moral abandonment of children, children in slavery, child
prostitution, infanticide, child morality, juvenile delinquency, child
abuse, street children, child emigration, and child morality and
sexuality.  The balance we strike between European and US topics will
be a function of student interest and the instructor's (Europeanist)
perspective.  Interested students should contact the instructor,
particularly if there are specific topics they would like to see
included in the syllabus.  Weekly discussions will be based on either
common or individual readings (as a function of the topic).  Students
will be responsible for a weekly reading assignment, participation in
discussions, some presentation, and three papers.