By Laurie Langbauer (NHC Fellow, 2011–12) A juvenile tradition of young writers flourished in Britain between 1750 and 1835. Canonical Romantic poets as well as now-unknown youthful writers published as teenagers. These teenage writers reflected on their literary juvenilia by using the trope of prolepsis to assert their writing as a literary tradition. Precocious writing, … Continued
By John F. Kasson (NHC Fellow, 1980–81; 2009–10) Her image appeared in periodicals and advertisements roughly twenty times daily; she rivaled FDR and Edward VIII as the most photographed person in the world. Her portrait brightened the homes of countless admirers: from a black laborer’s cabin in South Carolina and young Andy Warhol’s house in … Continued
By Michael Grossberg (NHC Fellow, 1987–88) A Judgment for Solomon tells the story of the d'Hauteville case, a controversial child custody battle fought in 1840. It uses the story of one couple's bitter fight over their son to explore some timebound and timeless features of American legal culture. In a narrative analysis, it recounts how … Continued
By Mark Golden (NHC Fellow, 1987–88) First published in 1990, Children and Childhood in Classical Athens was the first book in English to explore the lives of children in ancient Athens. Drawing on literary, artistic, and archaeological sources as well as on comparative studies of family history, Mark Golden offers a vivid portrait of the public and … Continued
By Nancy Scheper-Hughes (NHC Fellow, 1989–90) When lives are dominated by hunger, what becomes of love? When assaulted by daily acts of violence and untimely death, what happens to trust? Set in the lands of Northeast Brazil, this is an account of the everyday experience of scarcity, sickness and death that centres on the lives … Continued
By Kevin Ohi (NHC Fellow, 2004–05) Taking as its focus the erotic child in decadent aesthetics, this book explores the sexual and political stakes of an aestheticistexperience of rapture. Ohi examines the power of the work of art to transport, to disorient, to move, to extort the equivocal pleasuresof self-loss. He also explores how the … Continued
Edited by Nancy Scheper-Hughes (NHC Fellow, 1989–90) and Carolyn F. Sargent Small Wars gathers together a hard-hitting series of essays that demonstrate how, at the close of the twentieth century, the world's children are affected by global political-economic structures and by everyday practices embedded in the micro-level interactions of local cultures. Perceived as avenging spirits of … Continued
In 2003, while deployed to Iraq for Operation Iraqi Freedom, I went on various convoys and used to see many children in small towns and neighborhoods running around barefoot playing with their friends. One thing I noticed is that there was a lot of loose trash and broken glass. I noticed that many children did … Continued
As a child, Ken Stringfellow had difficulty relating to others and understanding seemingly inscrutable social cues. Turning to his parents’ collection of LPs changed all that. By immersing himself in symphonic compositions, he was able to understand and translate the emotions of others as they were represented artistically. Curator’s note: Ken Stringfellow is a singer, … Continued
Crawford recalls how a potentially traumatic move to a new high school at the age of fourteen could have been a distressing experience, but ultimately showed him the power of community, acceptance, and music.