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Posted for Andrea Immel, please excuse the cross posting

The conference, “Home, School, Play, Work: The Visual and Textual Worlds of Children,” part two will take place February 13-14 2009 on the campus of Princeton University in New Jersey.  This two-day program is being co-sponsored by Cotsen Children’s Library of Princeton University, The Center for Historic American Visual Culture, and The Program in the History of the Book in American Culture of the American Antiquarian Society, in conjunction with Worcester Polytechnic Institute.  Part one was held November 14-15 2008 in Worcester, Massachusetts.

“Home, School, Play, Work” part two will explore various aspects of nineteenth-century American childhood.  Speakers at Princeton, which will include historians, literary critics, curators, art and architecture historians, will affirm the importance of interdisciplinary approaches to the study of childhood, printed illustrated artifacts, and material culture.  Sessions will examine subjects such as: the function of pedagogical aides and classroom furniture; how children learned to be active spectators or to internalize attitudes towards different races and ethnic groups; ways children might rebel against constraints imposed upon them; and children as authors and future workers.

The complete program with paper abstracts and registration information can be viewed at: http://www.princeton.edu/cotsen/research-collection/academic-conferences/home-school-play-work/.

The Cotsen Children’s Library was founded in 1995 as a unit within Princeton University Library’s department of Rare Books and Special Collections. Cotsen houses one of the world’s premier collections of historical illustrated materials for children from the fifteenth century to the present day in all major Western European languages, Chinese, Czech, Hebrew, Japanese, and Russian.  Its holdings comprise books, prints, sheet music, manuscripts, original artwork, sound recordings, and educational cards, toys, and puzzles.  Its collection of American juvenile imprints is complemented by the Sinclair Hamilton Collection of American Illustrated Books in Graphic Arts.

Since 1998 Cotsen has awarded short-term grants for research through the program sponsored by the Friends of the Princeton University Library and the Department of Rare Books and Special Collections.  Scholars working at Cotsen typically explore the interplay between cultural trends and their expression in material for children, with an emphasis on the intersections between print, visual, and material cultures.

Andrea Immel

Curator, Cotsen

Children’s Library