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 Barbara J. Harris (NHC Fellow, 1994–95) Portraits of aristocratic women from the Yorkist and Tudor periods reveal elaborately clothed and bejeweled nobility, exemplars of their families' wealth. Unlike their male counterparts, their sitters have not been judged for their professional accomplishments. In this groundbreaking study, Barbara J. Harris argues that the roles of aristocratic … Continued
By Marianne Hirsch (NHC Fellow, 1992–93) Family photographs–snapshots and portraits, affixed to the refrigerator or displayed in gilded frames, crammed into shoeboxes or cataloged in albums–preserve ancestral history and perpetuate memories. Indeed, photography has become the family's primary means of self-representation. In Family Frames Marianne Hirsch uncovers both the deception and the power behind this … Continued
By M. Teresa Tavormina (NHC Fellow, 1983–84) Kindly Similitude is the first study to offer a detailed reading of the many passages in Piers Plowman A, B, and C concerned with marriage and family, and to place them within the frameworks of contemporary social history, law, theology, exegesis, and literature. The author shows how Langland draws on the … Continued
By Tsitsi Ella Jaji (NHC Fellow, 2017–18) Tsitsi Ella Jaji’s second full-length collection of poems, Mother Tongues, begins at home, with the first words and loves we learn, and the most intimate vows we swear. How deep does your language go back? Jaji’s artful verse is a three-tiered gourd of sustenance, vessel, and folklore. The tongues … Continued
By Janet Beizer (NHC Fellow, 1998–99) If questions of subjectivity and identification are at stake in all biographical writing, they are particularly trenchant for contemporary women biographers of women. Often, their efforts to exhume buried lives in hope of finding spiritual foremothers awaken maternal phantoms that must be embraced or confronted. Do women writing in … Continued
Slavery not only inhibited family formation but made stable, secure family life difficult if not impossible. A father might have one owner, his “wife” and children another. Family separation through sale was a constant threat. Many owners encouraged marriage to protect their investment in their slaves. Abolitionists attacked slavery by pointing to the harm it … Continued
During the last half century, a growing number of colonial historians have been drawn to studying child rearing practices and gender roles in different Protestant cultures. While their interpretations vary widely, all of these scholars underscore the importance of religious belief in shaping early Americans’ most intimate relationships, those between parents and children, husbands and … Continued
After the Civil War, African Americans placed poignant “information wanted” advertisements in newspapers, searching for missing family members. Inspired by the power of these ads, this webinar will use slave narratives, letters, interviews, public records, and diaries to guide back to devastating moments of family separation during slavery when people were sold away from parents, … Continued
I had heard about this documentary, Three Identical Strangers, from a co-worker – she said I absolutely had to see it! I am fascinated by the nature vs. nurture discussion and I could not wait to see how this was represented in the film. At the beginning of the story, I was 100% on board … Continued