Please forgive duplicate postings, but I thought some of our members might be interested in this conference. Best, Julie
Enduring Trifles: Writing the History of Childhood with Ephemera
17-19 February 2011
Cotsen Children’s Library, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ
We are accustomed today to a market in which goods for children represent substantial industries, but children have been increasingly targeted in the English-speaking world's consumer culture since the early industrial period. The desire to meet the developing child's needs provided the print trades with an impeccable rationale for producing an array of paper ephemera to "improve the shining hour" in the school room, the parlour and beyond.
By highlighting the variety of children's ephemera from the eighteenth century to the present, this conference hopes to demonstrate its potential for studying the history of childhood. Scholars will examine aspects of the history of childhood in Britain and the United States of America between the eighteenth and twenty-first centuries from the perspectives of book history, gender studies, and the histories of science, religion, political movements, education, and literature.
The program will also include two workshops where the presenters will have actual artefacts on hand for viewing and a round table on children's ephemera collecting, collection management, and the special challenges of making such materials available for research.
Conference participants: Brian Alderson; Peter Cope; M.O. Grenby (Newcastle
University) Rachel Gross, (Princeton University); Catherine Howell (Victoria and Albert Museum of Childhood); Russell Johnson (UCLA Biomedical Library); Katharine Kittredge (Ithaca College); Julie Anne Lambert (Bodleian Library, John Johnson Collection); Sarah Lloyd (University of Hertfordshire); Mary Clare Martin (University of Greenwich); Katherine Pandora (University of Oklahoma); Lucy Pearson; Carol Percy (University of Toronto); Alan Powers (University of Greenwich); Jacqueline Reid-Walsh (Pennsylvania State University); Adrian Seville; Jill Shefrin; Adrianne Wadewitz (Indiana University, Bloomington); Jenna Weissman Joselit (George Washington
University)
Co-organizers: Andrea Immel and Jill Shefrin
Details about registration will be posted 15 October.
