Tuesday, December 17, 2013

Welcome to the first issue of the official newsletter of the Institute of Child and Youth Studies (I-CYS) at the University of Lethbridge. The newsletter will be issued periodically throughout the year and, in keeping with the mandate of I-CYS, it aims to foster dialogue and enquiry across a range of disciplines connected to the study of children and youth.

Origins of I-CYS

The Institute for Child and Youth Studies was officially established in October 2012, but its origins date back to 2009, when several researchers at the University of Lethbridge discovered that they had independently started reading and thinking about childhood and youth. Historians, anthropologists, literary scholars, and those working in Education began to meet and talk about our growing cross-disciplinary interest in the issues of the young in the world. These fertile conversations quickly led to the identification of other scholars at the University of Lethbridge who were doing similar work. A core group of these scholars organized a conference in 2011: Mapping the Landscapes of Childhood.

The tremendous synergy produced by the conference led to a year of organizing and building a cross-disciplinary institute devoted to child and youth studies at the University of Lethbridge. The institute was approved by the Board of Governors on October 11, 2012, and our first Annual General Meeting was held on April 19, 2013.

Who We Are
There are seven core members of the I-CYS directorate. They are:

• Kristine Alexander, Assistant Professor of History and Canada Research Chair (Tier 2) in Child and Youth Studies. | I-CYS Co-Director
• Louise Barrett, Professor of Psychology and Canada Research Chair (Tier 1) in Cognition, Evolution, and Behaviour
• Elizabeth Galway, Associate Professor of English
• Jan Newberry, Associate Professor of Anthropology | I-CYS Co-Director
• Janay Nugent, Associate Professor of History
• Sergio Pellis, Professor of Neuroscience and Board of Governors Research Chair
• Amy Von Heyking, Associate Professor of Education

For a list of current I-CYS Affiliates, and for more information about the Institute, please visit our new website.

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November 22, 2013 | The Government of Canada has named Dr. Kristine Alexander, an assistant professor of history at the University of Lethbridge, a Tier 2 Canada Research Chair (CRC) in Child and Youth Studies.

Alexander, who investigates how 20th-century children and youth were affected by imperialism, globalization and war, is the U of L’s first Chair in the humanities.

To read more about this exciting development, click here.

July 5, 2013 | Dr. Elizabeth Galway has been a faculty member in the Department of English since 2003 where she teaches courses in Canadian literature, children's literature and nineteenth-century literature. She is the author of From Nursery Rhymes to Nationhood: Children's Literature and the Construction of Canadian Identity (Routledge 2008), and is currently working on a book about children's literature and the First World War.

Learn more about Dr. Galway’s research.

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University of Lethbridge

• Supervised reading courses: graduate students are welcome to approach I-CYS researchers to supervise graduate reading courses on appropriate subjects
• Master’s projects: all I-CYS researchers are able to supervise individual Master’s projects that correspond to their research interests in child and youth studies. Learn more.
• The Individual Multidisciplinary Master of Arts (IMMA) program: this option is open to students from Anthropology, Kinesiology, Sociology and Women’s Studies. I-CYS researchers and affiliates from these disciplines are able to supervise IMMA projects that correspond to their research interests in child and youth studies.

Rutgers-Camden Childhood Studies

• Applications now being sought for PhD and MA programs
• PhD application deadline: January 10th, 2014
• MA applications are accepted year-round

For more information click here.

Funded PhD Studentship: Producing the Geographies of Childhood in Colonial Africa: Children’s Lives in Twentieth-Century Nyasaland
University of Hull , U. K.

Closing date: February 3rd, 2014.
Application Form and details here.

Interested applicants are encouraged to direct informal enquiries to:

• Dr. Elsbeth Robson
• Dr. Rosemary Wall
• Prof David Atkinson

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The Guelph Public Library and the Friends of the Guelph Public Library are pleased to announce the Robert Munsch Award. Robert Munsch is an enormously successful children’s writer and
makes his home in Guelph, Ontario, Canada. In his honour, the Guelph Public Library will offer The Robert Munsch Award, a $1000 Cdn award for the best short essay or position paper discussing the place or the impact of the writings of Robert Munsch in English Language Children’s Literature.

Submissions must be received by April 15, 2014. Submissions will be evaluated by a panel of academics and librarians. For more information, please contact the Guelph Public Library.

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Opokaa’sin Early Intervention Society

On November 28, 2013, Opokaa’sin Early Intervention Society celebrated the grand opening of its new Child Development Centre. The Centre is the result of a major renovation project to a new building on Stafford Drive here in Lethbridge. It also represents an impressive expansion and consolidation of the programming offered by Opokaa’sin to Southern Alberta’s Aboriginal children and families.

Opokaa’sin opened in 1996 in a basement office in downtown Lethbridge. They have used culture as an “anchor” in a range of programs directed at children, teens, parents and families. With the new building, Opokaa’sin has expanded into Head Start programming as well as kindergarten with support from the Kainai Board of Education. They have been recognized by the Province of Alberta and their work will be highlighted at the upcoming Association of Childhood Education International (ACEI) Global Summit on Childhood in Vancouver from 10-13 April 2014. Tanya Pace Crosschild is the Executive Director of Opokaa’sin and a founding affiliate of I-CYS. Michelle Hogue, another founding I-CYS affiliate, was just named to Opokaa'sin's board of directors. Wishing them the best in this new endeavor!

Picture This

“Picture This”: A free exhibition on children’s book illustration at the British Library until 26 January 2014, The Folio Society Gallery

This new exhibition explores ten classic children’s books from the 20th century. Discover how illustrators over the years have interpreted – and reinterpreted – our favourite tales in beautiful and imaginative ways. Through original artwork, rare editions and personal correspondence be reunited with much-loved characters including Paddington Bear, Peter Pan and Willy Wonka and classic works such as Just So Stories, The Wind in the Willows and The Hobbit.

Visit this link to see images and short essays from the V&A Museum of Childhood about war and children’s play

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Student Workshop

On Friday, November 15 I-CYS hosted a workshop at the University of Lethbridge to support student research in the area of child and youth studies. The event showcased the work of four graduate students in very different disciplines:

• Alan Martino, M.A. candidate in Sociology spoke about sexual education and disability
• Arielle Perrotta M.A. candidate in Women &Gender Studies discussed her research in women’s birthing experiences
• Matthew Haberlin, M.Ed. candidate in Counseling Psychology shared about his experiences working with the Boys and Girls Club of Canada
• Mackenzie Renner M.Ed. candidate in Counseling Psychology explained her MA project which utilized Calico dolls in children’s hospital therapy

The session succeeded in showcasing the current graduate work at the University of Lethbridge in the field of child and youth studies, and fostered a student network amongst those with similar research interests. This workshop, along with future events, will help students to bring an interdisciplinary perspective to their work, provide them with constructive feedback, and enable them to make important networking connections with faculty and peers. Thanks go to University of Lethbridge graduate student Jillian King (Anthropology) for the hard work she put into organizing this workshop and making it a great success!

Sponsored Talk

On Wednesday, November 20, 2013, I-CYS sponsored a talk by Dr. Elizabeth Galway, Associate Professor of English at the University of Lethbridge. The presentation, entitled “War Games? Spaces, Places, and Politics in Children’s Literature of WWI,” drew on Galway’s current SSHRC-funded research on the ideological work of Canadian, British, and American children’s literature during the First World War. Her analysis of wartime picture books and novels for young people showed the extent to which the conflict invaded the material and discursive spaces of childhood. Children’s texts, which depicted young characters doing patriotic work, boycotting German toys, and foiling enemy spies, encouraged youngsters to see themselves as active and enthusiastic participants in the Allied war effort.  They also, as highlighted by this project’s innovative transnational framework, contained a series of shifting messages about national and regional identities. This event was attended by faculty and students from across the university, and concluded with a lively and wide-ranging discussion about children and war.

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Kristine Alexander

Recent Publications:

“An Honour and a Burden: Canadian Girls and the Great War,” in A Sisterhood of Suffering and Service: Canadian and Newfoundland Girls and Women and the First World War, edited by Sarah Glassford & Amy Shaw (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2012), 173-194.

“Can the Girl Guide Speak? The Perils and Pleasures of Looking for Children’s Voices in Archival Research,” Jeunesse: Young People, Texts, Cultures (Summer 2012): 132-144. 

Conference Papers:

“Race, Empire, and Internationalism in the Girl Guide Movement’s Utopian Spaces.” The Child in the World Conference. V & A Museum of Childhood, London. November 2013

“The Limits of Language: Photographs, Girlhood, and Colonialism.” Society for the History of Childhood and Youth Biennial Conference. The University of Nottingham. June 2013

“Unexpected Discoveries and Evidence of Destruction: Looking for Children in Private Archives.” Annual Meeting of the Canadian Historical Association. The University of Victoria. June 2013

“‘Given Enough Time, All Photographs Become Equally Important’: Visual Archives of Childhood and Colonialism.” Annual Meeting of the Canadian Historical Association. The University of Victoria. June 2013

Invited Talks:

“Family Letters and the First World War.” October 2013, Mount Royal University.

“Girlhood, Colonialism, and Archival Research.”  October 2013, Galt Museum & Archives, Lethbridge.

“‘Childhood, Race, and Twentieth-Century Canada.” Workshop on “Race and Identity: Interests and Interactions in Canada’s International History.”  May 2013, Harvard University.

“Access to Evidence: Archive Stories and their Ramifications.”  Keynote Address, Keewatin Country Graduate History Conference. April 2013, University of Saskatchewan.

Louise Barrett

Recent Publications:

Qualter, P., Rotenberg, K., Barrett, L., Henzi, S.P., Barlow, A., Stylianou, M.,  Burke, F., Hamilton, F., Leaning, V., Moore, J., Northrop, E. and Rennison.S. (2013). “Are lonely children hypersensitive to rejection? Investigating the hypersensitivity to rejection hypothesis of loneliness in children.” Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology 41: 325-338.

Forthcoming Publications:

Rotenberg, K., Qualter, P., Barrett, L., Henzi, S.P., and Harris, R. (in press) “When trust fails: the relation between children’s trust beliefs and their peer interactions in a natural setting.” Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology.

Graduate Student Activities:

Deanna Vaeluaga (Ph.D. candidate, University of Lethbridge) will be working on children's contributions to household labour and childcare in Samoa.

Jonathan Jarrett Ph.D. candidate, University of Lethbridge) is working on developmental trajectories in vervet infants from a life history perspective.

Elizabeth Galway

Recent Publications:

“Nursery Rhymes.” In Oxford Bibliographies in Childhood Studies. Ed. Heather Montgomery.  New York: Oxford UP, June 25, 2013.

“Competing Representations of Boy Soldiers in First World War Children’s Literature.” Children in Armed Conflicts. Spec. issue of Peace Review: A Journal of Social Justice 24:3 (September 2012): 298-304.

“How to Make Good Subjects: Guiding Girls, Creating Citizens, Constructing Consumers.” Jeunesse: Young People, Texts, Cultures 4:1 (2012):107-118. (Co-authored with Louise Barrett and Jan Newberry).

“Reminders of Rugby in the Halls of Hogwarts: The Insidious Influence of the School Story Genre on the Works of J.K. Rowling.” Children’s Literature Association Quarterly 37:1 (Spring 2012): 63-82.

Conference Papers and Presentations:

“From Neverland to No-Man’s Land: Notions of Place, Childhood, and Citizenship in WWI Children’s Literature.” American Comparative Literature Association Conference: Global Positioning Systems. April 4-7, 2013. University of Toronto.

Joint poster presentation at CURE (Community University Research Exchange) outlining research on “Risk and Resilience” within I-CYS. March 2013 University of Lethbridge.

Jan Newberry

Forthcoming Publications:

“Class Mobil: Circulation of Children in the Making of Middle Indonesia.” In Search of Middle Indonesia. Edited by Gerry Van Klinken and Ward Berenschot. Leiden: Brill.

Invited Talks:

May 2013  “Women and Children First: Networked Care and the Re-emergence of the Domestic Community.” Invited paper for conference Reconstituting Southeast Asian Families: Transnational Impacts and Local Dynamics, Institute for East Asian Studies, Sogang University (SIEAS), Seoul, Korea (May 23-24)

Janay Nugent

Conference Papers:

“Misbehaving Youth, Familial Strategies, and the ‘Godly Community’ in Early Modern Scotland.” Sixteenth Century Society and Conference (panel sponsored by The Calvin Studies Society). San Juan, Puerto Rico. Oct. 2013

“At the ‘mercat croce’: space, youth culture, and authority in early modern Scottish towns.” Gender in the European Town: Medieval to Modern Conference. University of Southern Denmark, Odense, Denmark. May 2013

“Swinging from The Glisson Sling: Children, Rickets and Healing in Early Eighteenth-Century Scotland.” Western Conference on British Studies. Las Vegas, U.S.A.  Sept. 2012

Invited Talks:

Concluding Address, “Through the key hole: family, children and space in early modern Scotland.” Space and Social Relations in Historical Perspective Conference. University of Edinburgh, U.K.  June 2012

Sergio M. Pellis

Workshops and presentations related to play and development:

Seminar “Peer-peer play and social competence” presented at the Southern Alberta Professional Development Consortium, Lethbridge, Alberta (February 2013)

Seminar “Play fighting, reciprocity and the making of a social brain” presented at the First International Native Games Conference, Pablo, Montana (June 2013)

Seminar “Acrobatic vervets and the choreography of play fighting” presented at the International Ethology Conference, Newcastle, UK (August 2013)

Workshop on “Play, Evolution, and Sociality" funded by the National Institute for Mathematical and Biological Synthesis (NIMBioS), held at the University of Tennessee. It involved 15 participants: 10 empirical researchers and 5 mathematicians and computer modelers (October 2013)

Seminar “Rough-and-tumble play and the development of a socially competent brain” presented in the NeuroNet Speaker series, University of Tennessee (November 2013)

Publications related to play and development:

Himmler, B., Pellis, V. C. & Pellis, S. M. (2013). Peering into the dynamics of social interactions: Measuring play fighting in rats. Journal of Visualized Experiments, 71, e4288, doi: 10.3791/4288, 1-8.

Himmler, B. T., Pellis, S. M., & Kolb, B. (2013). Juvenile play experience primes neurons in the medial prefrontal cortex to be more responsive to later experiences. Neuroscience Letters, 556, 42-45.

Himmler, B. T., Stryjek, R., Modlinska, K., Derksen, S. M., Pisula, W., & Pellis, S. M. (2013). How domestication modulates play behavior: A comparative analysis between wild rats and a laboratory strain of Rattus norvegicus. Journal of Comparative Psychology, 127, 453-464.

Pellis, S. M., & Pellis, V. C. (2013). Rough-and-tumble play: Insights on the development of the social brain in rats. In: M. Tulac, S. Brown, S. Thompson, A. Christopher (Eds.), The Encyclopedia of Play Science. Scholarpedia, 8(3): 30363.

Graduate Student Activities:

Poster “Juvenile Play Experience Attenuates the Initial Level for Nicotine Consumption” by graduate student, Brett Himmler, at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience, San Diego, CA (October 2013)

Amy von Heyking

Recent Publications:

"Aberhart, Manning and Religion in the Public Schools of Alberta." Alberta History (Fall 2013).

Forthcoming Publications:

Becoming a History Teacher: Sustaining Practices in Historical Thinking and Knowing. Co-edited with Ruth Sandwell.  Toronto: University of Toronto Press, Spring 2014.

"Children's Perspectives on the Past." Canadian Issues (Spring 2014).

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Tillie Curran and Katherine Runswick-Cole, eds. Disabled Children's Childhood Studies: Critical Approaches in a Global Context.  (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013) ISBN: 9781137008213

Walter Hamilton. Children of the Occupation: Japan’s Untold Story. (Routledge, 2013) ISBN: 9780813561004

Andrea Immel and Brian Alderson. Tommy Thumb’s Pretty Song-Book: A Facsimile of the Earliest English Nursery-Rhyme Book. (Cotsen Occasional Press, 2012) ISBN: 9780615678764

Emily W. Kane. Rethinking Gender and Sexuality in Childhood.(Bloomsbury, 2012) ISBN: 9781847060822

Karl Hanson and Olga Nieuwenhuys, eds. Reconceptualizing Children’s Rights in International Development: Living Rights, Social Justice, Translations. (Cambridge University Press, 2013). ISBN: 9781107031517

Mona Gleason. Small Matters: Canadian Children in Sickness and Health, 1900 to 1940. (McGill-Queen's, 2013) ISBN: 9780773541320

Patrick J. Ryan. Master-Servant Childhood: a history of the idea of Childhood in Medieval English Culture. (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013). ISBN: 9781137364784

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Representations of Childhood in Comics

Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics
Deadline: January 1, 2014
Representations of Childhood in Comics

Childhood is now widely recognized as a social construct (Fass, Jenks, Mintz). As the artifice behind the construction of childhood has been revealed, there has been a marked increase in the analysis of children and childhood in contemporary culture (Demarr and Bakermann, Edelman, Latham, McLennan, Renner, Stockton). Despite the increase in scholarly attention, depictions of childhood in comics and other forms of comic art are ripe for further study. The forthcoming issue of the Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics, focusing on comics, picturebooks, and childhood, should provide interesting insights into these depictions. Yet there remains plenty of room for consideration regarding how different comics construct childhood. This is an especially interesting area of inquiry given the somewhat vexed association comic books have traditionally maintained with childhood. In an attempt to continue developing the scholarly focus on childhood, as well as comics, we seek proposals for scholarly articles that analyze, explore and interrogate depictions of childhood in comics or comic art for inclusion in a book-length anthology.

Potential topics include:

• What do comics teach us about current constructions of childhood?
• How do comics resist or undermine contemporary constructions of childhood?
• How can comics help us better understand the role of children in a given societal context?
• How do comics shed light on the relationship between children and adults? Between adults and their own childhood?
• How can depictions of childhood be understood as metaphors for specific cultural phenomena, values, disruptions or evolutions?
• What anxieties regarding culture, politics, education, etc. do comics reveal?
• How have ideas regarding childhood affected comics?

Please submit an abstract of 300 words and a short CV to Mark Heimermann and Brittany Tullis at heimermanntullis@gmail.com by January 1st, 2014 for consideration. Full papers will be due by June 1st, 2014.

Wheelock International Journal of Children, Families, and Social Change
Inaugural Issue: Call for Papers

The Wheelock International Journal of Children, Families, and Social Change is an online, open-access, interdisciplinary forum for substantive conversations about understanding and improving the lives of children and families throughout the world. Our scope is unique and broad: peer-reviewed scholarly articles as well as essays by policy makers, advocates, educators, NGOs, and practitioners. We seek contributions that infuse intellectual rigor with moral and social purpose, and offer action strategies to address old problems and new opportunities. We aim for a broad and inclusive readership. Our goal: to enhance understanding and to foster change and progress.

The journal is currently accepting manuscripts for our inaugural issue from both established and emergent scholars and leaders. We publish a range of contributions, including case-studies, comparative analyses, advocacy, and policy articles. All submissions are carefully reviewed by relevant scholars and leaders in the field to maintain the highest standards of rigor and insight. Submissions to the Research & Scholarship section will be double-blind, peer-reviewed. We also welcome submissions from outside academia.

Relevant topics include education and schools, parenting and childrearing, globalization, gender, new pedagogies, work, service learning, art and music, violence, urbanism, health, media, technology, and more. We ask authors to formulate perspectives that are cutting-edge, and to write for a wide readership that expands beyond the traditional confines of any single discipline. We invite submissions that learn from the past, explore the present, and look ahead to a bright future. We welcome authors from a variety of disciplines: history, education, women's studies, literature, psychology, feminism, family studies, religion, childhood studies, anthropology, sociology, social work, critical theory, political science, and development studies. The journal seeks to build intellectual bridges between scholarly disciplines and to bring together theory and practice, scholarship and activism, the academy and the "real world," developed and developing nations. Our scope is global in focus and outreach. We offer the journal at no charge to readers and eagerly invite contributions from thought leaders around the world.

For further information, submission guidelines, the Editorial Board, and to sign up for updates, please visit our website. You are also welcome to contact the Editor, Eric Silverman.

The Wheelock International Journal of Children, Families, and Social Change, like our institutional host Wheelock College, is committed to creating a just world for children and families. Join us in this important work.

Call for Papers, Special Issue: The Comparative and International Histories of School Accountability and Testing

The current set of debates within national education systems includes significant discussion and enactment of school accountability mechanisms. While there is considerable variation among countries, the internationalization of test-based accountability is a significant and recent phenomenon. That broader pattern of accountability has a history that overlaps with both the history of testing and the broader relationship between schools and the nation and society in which they are embedded. Yet with a few exceptions, the discussion of the history of school accountability exists primarily in reference to individual nations.

A comparative and international history of school accountability can explore the relationships among individual national histories of accountability policy and discourse and broader questions of international trends and patterns. This is both a question of longer-term historical patterns and contemporary debates within the field of comparative education over the extent of broad international patterns of school change.

Education Policy Analysis Archives (EPAA) announces a call for papers for a special issue exploring the comparative and international history of school accountability and testing. The editors of the special issue seek manuscripts that address this history either at the national or at the international level. At the scale of individual societies, what have been important factors in that history? When examined comparatively, what has shaped international patterns and international variation? What repertoires of testing and accountability systems have been available for individual societies and national or local education systems? How have the limits of acceptable practices changed over the decades and centuries? How has the development of school accountability systems changed the relationship between formal schooling and broader cultures?

About the Journal:

Celebrating its 20th year, EPAA is a peer-reviewed, open-access, international, multilingual, and multidisciplinary journal designed for researchers, practitioners, policy makers, and development analysts concerned with education policies. EPAA/AAPE accepts unpublished original manuscripts in English, Spanish and Portuguese without restriction as to conceptual and methodological perspectives, time or place.

Submission Information:

All manuscripts should be submitted electronically through the EPAA website and follow the Journal’s submission guidelines. We will not consider manuscripts submitted for publication or published elsewhere.

Deadline: January 27th, 2014
Publication date: October 6th, 2014
Early submissions are encouraged.

Guest Editors:

• Sherman Dorn, University of South Florida, dorn@usf.edu
• Christian Ydesen, Aalborg University, cy@learning.aau.dk

Education Policy Analysis Archives:

• Website
• Facebook
• Twitter

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Session at the ESHS Conference, Lisbon, 4-6 September 2014.

Science for children has often been enmeshed with moral, religious and social agendas in more or less obvious ways. In this sense, understanding the way science has been communicated to the youngest can offer insights into how science has been used for shaping tomorrow's citizens. Did these campaigns really contribute to strengthening the technological foundations of modern societies? What do we actually know about the means, the actors, the strategies, the contexts, and the outcomes surrounding science communication targeted at a pre-teenage audience in various places and at various times? While research on popular science has made significant progress in the last decades, science for children is a topic that is, with few exceptions, largely understudied. This session intends to bundle the existing approaches and bringing people with various backgrounds together to discuss "science for children" from a historical perspective.

Participants are invited to address issues such as:

• Sources: Books, juvenile encyclopedias, comics, serials, sticker collections, newspapers, science toys and games, television programs and films for children. Science topics covered. Ways of representing science. Popular science books for children versus popular science books for adults.
• Reception: Children as an audience: children´s reception of popular science books in public libraries. Children´s reception of television science shows. Preferred topics.
• Actors: Children as authors. Ways of representing science. Editors and educators. Parents and politicians.
• Institutions: Science education for children (curricula, text books). Science clubs, science fairs and science museums for children.
• Strategies: Popular science books versus school science textbooks for children. Opening minds to new ideas versus framing minds for learning? Iconography, literary styles, rhetorical devices and types of discourse used in science texts for children.
• Ideologies: Influence of political, religious, moral and social codes on the way science is communicated to children.
• International circulation and local appropriation.

This call is open for other tantalizing questions. Please, feel free to make your contribution.

Deadline for submission of paper proposals: 1 January 2014

Please send Isabel Zilhão an abstract in English:

• maximum 400-words
• including title, name(s) & affiliation(s) of the author(s)

Isabel Zilhão
Interuniversity Center for the History of Science and Technology (CIUHCT)
Faculty of sciences, C4 building, room 4.3.09, Campo Grande
1749-016 Lisboa  Portugal

“Twenty Years a Growing: An International Conference on the History of Irish Childhood from the Medieval to the Modern Age” to be held at St Patrick’s College, Drumcondra, Dublin, Ireland on the 9 - 10 June 2014

This international and interdisciplinary conference on the history of Irish childhood will create a forum for scholars working on the history of childhood; it will facilitate and foster debate on childhood in Ireland; and it will serve as a starting-point in the development of this new discipline.

Call for Papers

We suggest below a series of conference themes relating to the history of Irish childhood. These are indicative only; we will gladly receive submissions on all alternative topics:

• Associational culture, Sport and Pastimes
• Children’s Literature, Biography and autobiography
• Education and Schooling
• Emigration, Migration and Transnationalism
• Children in Folklore and Oral History
• Irish Language and literature
• Medical and Institutional History
• Social History and childhood

Please submit abstracts of 300 words and a short biography of 50 words to irish.childhood@gmail.com by 20th December 2013.  We welcome joint proposals for panels of three papers on themes other than those stated above. Cuirfear fáilte roimh chainteanna as Gaeilge agus as Bèarla. Papers in both the Irish language and English language will be most welcome.

Please note that we intend to pursue publication avenues stemming from the conference theme.

Further details may be located here.

Conference Committee:

• Gaye Ashford (SPD)
• Sarah-Anne Buckjley (NUIG)
• Jutta Kruse (UL)
• Marnie Hay (SPD)
• Mary Hatfield (TCD)
• Ríona Nic Congáil (SPD)

Conference on Childhood Studies: Values of Childhood and Childhood Studies

The Finnish Society for Childhood Studies, Oulu, 7–9 May, 2014
Deadline: December 31, 2013

The Finnish Society for Childhood Studies invites submissions for proposals for the multidisciplinary conference on childhood studies. The focus of the conference will be on values – the values of childhood as well as the values in and valuation of childhood studies. The conference aims to draw together scholarship from all parts of the world to represent a global range of geo-political contexts and a creative encounter of different methodologies and substantive issues. We particularly welcome papers that respond to the main theme from different viewpoints including but not limited to:

• Ethical questions and values in childhood research
• Methodological challenges in childhood research
• ealth and equality in childhood
• Childhood and moral values
• Childhood in plural societies
• Northern childhoods
• Historicising the values of childhood
• Gendered values of childhood
• Languages of childhood
• Values in education
• Contested and conflicting values of childhood
• Institutional and individual values of childhood
• ulnerable childhoods
• Children’s participation
• Other viewpoints

Sessions will be arranged either in English or in Finnish. A proposal can be submitted for:

• Individual paper presentation: 20-30 minutes including discussion
• Self-organised sessions: groups may propose to organize a full session of 90 minutes including presentations (3-4 individual papers and discussion, or round table discussion)
• Poster presentation: sessions will be set up for conference participants to interact with poster presenters

For further information, click here.

Pain, Illness, Trauma and Death in Childhood

University of Greenwich, Centre for the Study of Play and Recreation, with the Society for the Study of Childhood in the Past and the London Network for the History of Children. 1st February, 2014, Maritime Greenwich Campus, London.

Pain, illness, trauma and death are intrinsic to the shaping of childhood and to the experience of being a child. In the past, pain could be perceived as beneficial, either in forming character or bringing the subject closer to God. In the present, the enormous popularity of "misery memoirs" raises questions as to why the theme of abuse has such resonance in the twentieth and twenty-first century western world.

Topics include, but are not restricted to:

• Contributions from history, sociology, anthropology, archaeology, literary studies, psychology, philosophy, geography or health studies
• Pain, whether physical, emotional, or spiritual, including that inflicted by children
• Discipline and punishment
• Analysis of the ways changing patterns of illness shaped the experience of childhood
• Methodological approaches (such as the history of the emotions) or different sources (such as visual or material culture)  for analysing the experiences of children and their carers
• Children's experiences of war, including the First World War

Please e-mail abstracts of 250-300 words. The conference is free, but registration (via this e-mail address) is required.

Deadline: 31st December 2013.

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