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Childhood and Youth Studies Caucus
The American Studies Association’s Childhood and Youth Studies Caucus invites all interested 2008 ASA conference attendees to attend the following four events, to be held at the annual meeting in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Oct. 16-19, in the Albquerque Convention Center.
1) Caucus-Sponsored Panel
Disability & Youth Culture: “Mental Defective” Embodiment, Special Education, and the Brain
Friday, Oct. 17, 2:00-3:45, Taos Room
Chair: Michael Bérubé (Pennsylvania State University, University Park Main Campus (PA))
Presenters:
Mona Gleason (University of British Columbia (Canada))
Navigating the Pedagogy of Failure: Medicine and Education Encounters the Disabled Child in English Canada, 1900-1960
Beth Ferri (Syracuse University (NY)), *David John Connor (City University of New York, Hunter College (NY))I was the special ed. girl: Urban Working-class Young Women of Color
Julie Passanante Elman (George Washington University (DC))
Normative Neurology: Disability and Teen Sexuality in the Decade of the Brain
Commentator: Michael Bérubé
2) Related Panel of Interest
At the Crossroads of Children’s Studies and American Studies: Intersections, Possibilities, Challenges
Saturday, Oct. 18, 10-11:45, Tijeras Room
Chair: Carol J. Singley (Rutgers University, Camden (NJ))
Presenter: Anna Mae Duane (University of Connecticut (CT))
Presenter: Paula S. Fass (University of California, Berkeley (CA))
Presenter: Lucia Hodgson (University of Southern California (CA))
Presenter: Caroline F. Levander (Rice University (TX))
Presenter: Karen Sánchez-Eppler (Amherst College (MA))
3) Related Panel of Interest
Coloring Outside the Lines: Performing Race in Children’s Books
Saturday, Oct. 18, 12:00-1:45, Santa Ana Room
Chair: Cecelia Tichi (Vanderbilt University (TN))
Presenters:
Jennifer A. Hughes (Emory University (GA))
The Right to Laugh: Children, Race, and Humorous Publication in Antebellum America
Michelle H. Martin (Clemson University (SC))
Performing Race, Performing Music & Black Identity: The Sad-Faced Boys of Arna Bontemps
Philip Nel (Kansas State University (KS))
The Black Cat in the Hat: Seuss and Race in the 1950s
4) Annual Business Meeting of the Childhood and Youth Studies Caucus
Thursday, Oct. 16, 11:45-1:15, Nambe Room
For further information or to join our caucus, please visit our website at http://www.theasa.net/caucus_youth/
or e-mail the caucus organizers, Bill Bush (william.bush@tamuk.edu) and Adam Golub (agolub@fullerton.edu).
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Caucus-related events at 2007 ASA:
1) Business Meeting of the Childhood and Youth Studies Caucus
WHEN? Saturday, Oct. 13, 12-1:30, Rm. 501
2) “Childhood and Youth Studies: Surveying an Emerging Interdisciplinary Field.”
“Breakfast of Champions” Roundtable Panel for Graduate Students, co-sponsored with the ASA Students’ Committee
Panel Participants:
Paula Fass, UC-Berkeley; Myra Bluebond-Langner, Rutgers University; William Bush, UNLV
WHEN? Saturday, Oct. 13, 8 AM, Salon CD.
3) Keywords in the Historical Study of Children and Youth
Chair: Lynne Vallone, Department of Childhood Studies, Rutgers U.
Panel Participants:
“Character”: Jay Mechling, American Studies, U. of California, Davis
“Innocence”: Leslie Paris, History, U. of British Columbia
“Consumer Culture”: Daniel Thomas Cook, Department of Childhood Studies,
Rutgers U.
“Politics”: Julia Mickenberg, American Studies, U. of Texas-Austin
Comment: Lynne Vallone, Department of Childhood Studies, Rutgers U.
WHEN? Friday, Oct. 12, 2-3:45, Rm. 412
4) Forty Years of Juvenile Justice Studies in North America: Revisiting Anthony M. Platt’s _The Child Savers_ (1969, 1977)
Chair: Miroslava Chavez-Garcia, Chicana/o Studies, U. of California, Davis
Panel Participants:
Anthony M. Platt, School of Social Work, California State U., Sacramento
Mary Odem, Women’s Studies and History, Emory University
Tamara Myers, History, U. of British Columbia
Geoff Ward, College of Criminal Justice, Northeastern U.
William Bush, History, U. of Nevada-Las Vegas
Comment: The Audience
WHEN? Friday, Oct. 12, 8-9:45, Rm. 412
* * *
Community Blog
CFP: American Antiquarian Society Conference on Children’s Culture
http://www.americanantiquarian.org/chavic2008.htm
Rutgers Childhood Studies Graduate Program
Graduate Study in the field of Childhood Studies
at Rutgers University-Camden.USA
The Department of Childhood Studies at Rutgers University in Camden, New Jersey USA opened its doors in September 2007. The interdisciplinary program offers BA, MA and PhD degrees (http://childhood.camden.rutgers.edu). Students come from a variety of backgrounds and bring an impressive array of educational and life experience to the program. Financial aid, teaching and research assistantships are available to qualified, full-time students.
The full-time faculty in the department are complemented by Associates in the Center for Children and Childhood Studies (http://children.camden.rutgers.edu/index.htm). These faculty have appointments in a wide range of departments and schools around the University, including, among others, Anthropology, Psychology, Sociology, Criminology, English, Public Policy, Religion and Philosophy, History and Law. Courses available to graduate students extend from the two-semester Proseminar in Childhood Studies to a variety of methods courses (statistical, interpretive, literary) across the campus to in-depth study of specific areas such as Children and Childhood in Cross-Cultural Perspectives, Child Growth and Development, Issues in Social Policy, Growing Up in Africa, History of Childhood, Children’s Literature and Children and the Justice System.
The Department and Center sponsor regular Research Seminars in addition to hosting conferences and visiting scholars. These activities add to the already vibrant intellectual culture on the campus.
Rutgers-Camden, a beautiful, urban campus expanding to accommodate the growth of Southern New Jersey, is located just across the Delaware River from Philadelphia offering access to the intellectual and cultural resources of the area.
The Department expects to continue to expand over the next several years through the recruitment of faculty and is currently undertaking a search for a senior scholar (http://childhood.camden.rutgers.edu/CS-ad.htm).
Applications are now being taken for graduate study in Childhood Studies. Interested persons should go to http://childhood.camden.rutgers.edu. Direct any inquires to: Dr. Daniel Hart, Chair (.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)); telephone in the US +1 856-225-6438 or Dr. Dan Cook, Director of Graduate Studies (.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)), telephone in the US +1 856-225-2816.
First review of Tamara Myers, Caught: Montreal’s Modern Girls and the Law, 1869-1945
Tamara Myers’ new book was published late last year by the University of Toronto Press and is just starting to get the recognition it deserves. So even though hardly anyone reads this site yet, I thought I’d post something about it here in anticipation of new readers.
This book is part of a wave of new juvenile justice scholarship that is pushing the field in exciting new directions: chronologically, geographically, and methodologically.
American scholars could learn a lot from this book.
Quoting from a review in the Spring 2007 issue of _Canadian Literature_:
“Myers looks at les jeunes filles modernes in Montreal and situates their construction by and treatment in the juvenile justice system, itself a nexus of class, race, gender, culture, and national imagination. She begins with the inauguration of the Montreal Juvenile Delinquents’ Court in 1869 and walks through the Juvenile Delinquency Act, the interference from Catholic, Protestant and Jewish religions, and the practical gendered matters of the courts (among others). She concludes with a chapter on reform schools (the Girls’ Cottage Industrial School), the most interesting section of which notes its geography (set in nature to reinforce perception of women’s innate innocence and delicateness) and architecture (different cottages for those with venereal disease, those who were immoral but without disease, and those who were incorrigible). Here the interior space of the reform schools mimicked the imagined (defiled) interior spaces of these young women.
“Myers is careful to document instances where young female delinquents weren’t just victims, or acted upon.”
Read the whole review: http://www.canlit.ca/reviews-review.php?id=13401
Bush to Uninsured Children: Drop Dead
It’s well known that the CHIP program has become a proxy battle over health care more generally.
But as a former Texas resident who remembers how Gov Bush and his successor labored to prevent poor children from accessing CHIP in the 90s, it’s especially revolting to see his veto threat here.
Story below:
September 20, 2007
Bush Assails Democrats Over Child Health Bill
By DAVID STOUT
WASHINGTON, Sept. 20—President Bush accused Congressional Democrats today of playing politics with the health of children, and he warned again that he would veto a children’s insurance bill if it emerged from Congress in its present form.
Instead of posturing by sending him a bill they know he will reject, Mr. Bush said, the Democrats should embrace fiscal and social responsibility and pass a bill that provides for reasonable increases in spending on health insurance for uninsured children without veering toward the “federalization of health care.”
The president spoke at a White House news conference convened for the express purpose of trying to head off political damage from Democrats who are mocking Mr. Bush’s description of himself as a compassionate conservative because of his opposition to the increased spending in the children’s insurance bill.
While he responded to an array of questions on domestic and foreign issues, Mr. Bush led off with comments about the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, also known as S-Chip.
“What I’m describing here is a philosophical divide that exists in Washington over the best approach for health care,” Mr. Bush said. “Democratic leaders in Congress want to put more power in the hands of government by expanding federal health care programs. Their S-Chip plan is an incremental step toward the goal of government-run health care for every American.”
“I have a different view,” Mr. Bush went on. “I believe the best approach is to put more power in the hands of individuals by empowering people and their doctors to make health care decisions that are right for them. Instead of expanding S-Chip beyond its original purpose, we should return it to its original focus, and that is helping poor children, those who are most in need.”
Until the White House and Congress can come up with a health bill acceptable to both, Congress should pass “a clean, temporary extension” of the current program, which expires at the end of the fiscal year on Sept. 30, Mr. Bush said. The president said he had instructed Michael Leavitt, the secretary of health and human services, to work with state to minimize damage in the event that the program lapses.
Negotiators for the Senate and House have agreed on the outlines of a bill that would provide health insurance for an additional four million children who do not now have coverage. About 6.6 million children are now covered. Under the emerging bill, $60 billion would be provided for S-Chip program over the next five years—$35 billion more than current spending, and $30 billion more than Mr. Bush has recommended, but $15 billion less than the House originally wanted.
The House-Senate accord would increase tobacco taxes to cover more children. When Mr. Bush was asked if he would oppose a tobacco tax increase, he said, “We don’t need to raise taxes,” and added that lawmakers were trying to expand the health-insurance program beyond its original mandate to aid poor children.
While the White House prefers to cast the disagreement with Congress as a battle between financially responsible stewards of the taxpayers’ money against heavy-spending Democrats, the situation is much more complex. Many Republicans—senators as well as governors—also support an increase in S-Chip spending.
In a recent letter to Congress, Gov. Sonny Perdue of Georgia, chairman of the Republican Governors Association, and Gov. Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas, chairwoman of the Democratic Governors Association, said that without at least a re-authorization of the current program a dozen states would run out of federal money on Oct. 1, and two dozen more would run out in the ensuing months without a fresh infusion of money.
The Senate version of the S-Chip bill passed by 68 to 31 last month, enough to make the two-thirds necessary to override a presidential veto, thanks to considerable Republican support. But only five Republicans voted for the House version when it was approved by 225 to 204—well short of the 290 votes needed to override a veto if the full House membership of 435 votes.
Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, who is seeking the Democratic nomination for president, said she found Mr. Bush’s stand “unimaginable,” and that in effect Mr. Bush was “walking away from taking care of our children.”
The senator noted in an interview on CNN that the Republican-controlled Congress passed the children’s health program in 1997. As for Mr. Bush’s argument that the bill was meant to cover poor children, she said the greatest number of children who are losing insurance coverage are in middle-class families, and that they are losing out “because the employer-based system is eroding” and their parents cannot afford to buy insurance.
Meanwhile, Democrats are not unhappy over the White House’s political difficulties with children’s health insurance. Representative Rahm Emanuel of Illinois, chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, issued a statement asserting that Mr. Bush had a much more expansive view of S-Chip back in 2004, “when he was willing to say anything to get re-elected.”
In other words, Mr. Emanuel said, “President Bush was for expanding S-Chip before he was against it.”
Bloggy Ideas
I would very much like to see this community blog turn into a vibrant site for any and all postings related to the study of childhood and youth.
This can include book reviews, CFPs, conference reports, current events discussion, etc.
Let’s agree to address this at our business meeting at ASA. Maybe we can get a couple of members to agree to become regular commenters on this site.
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