RHN 184/2018 | Call
Organiser: Miriam Muller (Department of History, University of Birmingham, UK)
Rural History 2019, 10-13 September 2019, Paris, France
Deadline for paper proposals: 1 February 2019
Call for Papers:
Rural History 2019 Panel
Growing up in the Village
This panel seeks to explore the nature and experience of childhood and adolescence in pre-modern and modern rural communities. The multidisciplinary field of Childhood Studies has made great strides in recent years, including the founding of new academic journals on childhood studies and histories of childhood, yet in much, especially in pre-modern historical research the history of childhood is still marginalised. It is the aim of this panel to move childhood further into the centre of research in particular in the context of rural studies. The idea of rural childhood is nowadays often tinged in rosy hues, and romanticised as ideal childhood experiences, free from the dirt and cramped conditions, away from the dangers of cars and capitalist exploitation. In medieval and early modern contexts childhoods are imagined as harsh, brutal and often short. The aims of this panel are therefore to engage with these concerns and throw fresh light on the nature of the history of rural childhoods. Individual papers might engage with topics including working children, the experience of apprenticeships or service, attitudes to children and adolescents, village orphans and child heirs, the way children were able to wield agency, the organisation of care for children, diets, clothes, toys, other aspects of material culture.
Contact: m.muller@bham.ac.uk
Conference Website: http://ruralhistory2019.ehess.fr/
Online Submission Tool: https://eurhoparis2019.sciencesconf.org/submission/submit