Call for Papers

Home, School, Play, Work: The Visual and Textual Worlds of Children
October 31 and November 1, 2008
Worcester, Massachusetts

The Center for Historic American Visual Culture (CHAViC) and the Program in the History of the Book in American Culture (PHBAC) at the American Antiquarian Society seek papers that explore the visual and textual worlds of children in America from 1700 to 1900. We welcome proposals that address the creation, circulation, and reception of print, manuscript, and other materials produced for, by, or about children.

Submissions may address any aspect of eighteenth and nineteenth-century textual, visual, or material culture that relate to the experience or representation of childhood. Suggested topics include popular prints for or of children, board and card games, children’s book illustration, visual aspects of children’s books and magazines, early photography and children, performing children (theater, dance, the circus), dolls and puppets, child workers in art and printing industries, images of children and race, representations of childhood sexuality, the architecture of childhood spaces (schoolrooms, nurseries), children’s clothing, children’s appropriation of commodities, children’s handiwork (samplers, dolls, toys), and theories of visuality or textuality and childhood.

Please send a one-page proposal for a 20-minute paper and a brief CV by January 10, 2008, to:

Georgia Barnhill, Director of CHAViC
185 Salisbury Street
Worcester, Massachusetts 01609-1634
gbarnhill@mwa.org

About the Conference Committee

The conference committee is chaired by Patricia Crain, professor of English at New York University. Other members include Joshua Brown, executive director of the American Social History Project at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York; Martin Bruckner, professor of English, University of Delaware; Andrea Immel, curator of the Cotsen Children’s Library, Princeton University Library; Paula Petrik, professor of history and art history at George Mason University; Laura Wasowicz, curator of children’s literature at AAS; Caroline Sloat, AAS director of scholarly publications; and Georgia Barnhill, curator of graphic arts and director of CHAViC.