PAST CONFERENCE - 2008

Home, School, Play, Work:
The Visual and Textual Worlds of Children

[download conference flyer]

November 14-15, 2008
Worcester, Massachusetts

  

February 13-14, 2009
Princeton, New Jersey

This conference was sponsored by 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, in conjunction with Worcester Polytechnic Institute and the Cotsen Children's Library, Princeton University.

Papers addressed aspects of eighteenth and nineteenth-century textual, visual, or material culture that related to the experience or representation of childhood.

 

~ Schedule and Program ~

Friday, November 14:

Sessions were held in Antiquarian Hall, American Antiquarian Society, 185 Salisbury Street, Worcester

1 p.m - Opening remarks

Session 1: The Children's Literature Canon

  • Katherine Pandora, University of Oklahoma, "'There was a Child Went Forth Everyday': The Natural World as a Republican Nursery in the Antebellum Literature of Samuel Griswold Goodrich and Jacob Abbott"
  • Natasha Hurley, University of Alberta, "The Form that Audience Takes: Melville's Typee as Children's Literature"
  • Helen Sheumaker, Miami University and the William Holmes McGuffey Museum, "'The New Book': Textbook Imagery, Ideological Purpose, and Learning to Read"

Break

Session 2: Circulation of Children's Literature

  • Ellen Gruber Garvey, New Jersey City University, "The Pedagogy of the Periodical, the Textbook, and the Scrapbook"
  • Sara Berrey Lindey, St. Vincent College, "Contributors and Correspondents: How Boys and Girls Read and Write Nineteenth-Century Story Papers"
  • Paul Ringel, High Point University, "Thrills for Children: Didacticism and Sensationalism in the Cautionary Tales of The Youth's Companion, 1857-1880"

6 p.m.

Session 3: Patricia Crain, associate professor of English, New York University

  • Twenty-Sixth Annual James Russell Wiggins Lecture in the Program in the History of the Book in American Culture: "Babes in the Wood: Print, Orality, and Children's Literature in the Nineteenth-Century United States"

Reception held at the Goddard Daniels House, 190 Salisbury Street

 

Saturday, November 15:

Sessions were at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Salisbury Laboratories
(WPI Campus Map)

9:00 a.m.

Session 4: Portraits, Photographs, and Exhibitions: Looking at Children

  • C. Dallett Hemphill, Ursinus College, "Representations of Siblings in Children's Stories and Family Portraits, 1780-1820"
  • Lauren B. Hewes, American Antiquarian Society, "Photography of Children before the Civil War: The Relationship between the Painted Portrait Tradition and the New Medium of Photography, 1840-1865"
  • Jennifer A. Greenhill, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, "'Too Noisy for an Art Exhibition': Childish Jocularity and the Emerging Culture of Art in the 1870s"

Session 5: Collectors Round Table

  • Marcus A. McCorison, Worcester, Massachusetts, The Children's Book Collection at the American Antiquarian Society
  • James S. Brust, M.D., San Pedro, California, "Collecting Currier & Ives Lithographs"
  • Linda Lapides, Baltimore, Maryland, "'Remember Me When This you See': Images of Childhood Preserved in Endpapeer Inscriptions, Reward Citations and the Effects of Harriett True"
  • Peter Walther, Oriskany, New York, "Oprical Allusions: or, How I Look at My Collection"

12 noon - Lunch

Session 6a: Girlhood in Print and Portraiture

  • Carol Soltis, Philadelphia Museum of Art, "Thomas Sully's Girls at Risk: Didacticism and Drama in Nineteenth-Century American Painting and Print Culture"
  • Rebecca R. Noel, Plymouth State University, "The Child's Textualized Body in Antebellum Hygiene Schoolbooks"
  • Gretchen Sinnett, Wheaton College, "'The Date of My Martyrdom': Visual and Textual Representations of Nineteenth-Century Girls' Transition to Womanly Wardrobes"

Session 6b: Material Culture of the School

  • Anne D. Williams, Bates College, "Silent Teachers: Map Puzzles in Nineteenth-Century America"
  • Sarah Anne Carter, Harvard University, "Object Lessons in the Nineteenth-Century Classroom"
  • Daniel Rosenberg, University of Oregon, "Chronological Charts of History"

Session 7: Pictures, Picture Books, and Paper Toys: Learning about Race

  • Sarah Z. Gould, University of Michigan, "Playing American: Learning Race from Early American Paper Toys and Games"
  • Robin Bernstein, Harvard University, "Touching Eva, Touching Tom/Touching Eva Touching Tom"
  • Laura Napolitano, independent curator, "'Equally Clever and Humorous': Lilly Martin Spencer's Reassuring Lithographs of Children"

Concluding Remarks

February 13-14, 2009

Cotsen Children's Library
Princeton University
Princeton, New Jersey

The complete program with paper abstracts and registration information can be viewed at the Cotsen Children's Library website.

Conference Committee

Patricia Crain, New York University, Chair
Georgia B. Barnhill, American Antiquarian Society
Joshua Brown, Graduate Center, CUNY
Martin Brückner, University of Delaware
Paul Erickson, American Antiquarian Society
Andrea Immel, Princeton University
Paula Petrik, George Mason University
Karen Sánchez-Eppler, Amherst College
Caroline F. Sloat, American Antiquarian Society
Laura Wasowicz, American Antiquarian Society

 

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