NEER Research Cluster

Children in Europe and the Australian Colonies c.1300-1850

MEMBERS

Dr Stephanie Tarbin (UWA) - Coordinator
Dr Merridee Bailey (ECR, ANU)
A/Prof. Susan Broomhall (UWA)
Professor Patricia Crawford (UWA)
Dr Laura Gowing (London, UK)
Dr Alysa Levene (Oxford, UK)
Professor Philippa Maddern (UWA)
Dr Cathy McClive (Durham, UK)
Dr Lesley O'Brien (ECR, UWA)
Dr Tom Nutt (Cambridge, UK)
Dr Ursula Potter (Sydney)
Dr Jenny Spinks (ECR, Melbourne)
Dr Jacqueline Van Gent (UWA)
Dr Claire Walker (Adelaide)

BRIEF DESCRIPTION

The care and upbringing of children is a major concern in modern society but the long history of childhood has yet to move beyond the general to interrogate how different discursive, legal and social contexts shape the experiences of children and representations of childhood. The Children Cluster aims to bring scholars from a variety of disciplinary perspectives into a sustained dialogue about the long history of childhood and gaps in the study of children's experiences in the European past.

EVENTS (INCLUDING MEETINGS AND WORKSHOPS)

September 2006: planning meeting at University of Western Australia.
July 2007: planning meeting at University of Western Australia.

Conferences and symposia:

February 2007: 2 panels at the biennial ANZAMEMS Conference, University of Adelaide.

July 2007: 3 panels at the Inaugural NEER International Conference, University of Western Australia.

November 2008: 2 panels at the Hobart ANZAMEMS conference.

PUBLICATIONS

Merridee L. Bailey, "In Service and at Home: Didactic Texts for Children and Young People, c. 1400-1600", Parergon 24.2 (2007).

Broomhall, Susan and Colette H. Winn, eds. Les femmes et l'histoire familiale, (XVIe - XVIIe siecle): Renee Burlamacchi, Descrittione della Vita e Morte del Signor Michele Burlamachi (1623); Jeanne du Laurens, Genealogie de Messieurs du Laurens (1631) (Paris: Honore Champion, 2008). (Critical edition of both texts and introduction - 50% contribution). One of these texts contains the only (as far as we know) account of a child's experiences of the St Bartholomew's Massacre in Paris.

Broomhall, Susan ed. Emotions in the Household, 1200-1900 (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008). Contains an essay (by Baggermann and Dekker) which is relevant to the history of childhood emotional expression, as well as a number which raise issues of parent-child relations.

Broomhall, Susan, "Imagined Domesticities in Early Modern Dutch Dolls' Houses", Parergon 24.2 (2007). Examines the focus on lying-in, and nursery rooms, in the construction of these houses.

Crawford, Patricia, "'Civic fathers' and children: Continuities from Elizabethan England to the Australian colonies", History Australia, vol. 5 no 1, April (2008).

McClive, Cathy, "Blood and Expertise: The Trials of the Female Medical Expert in Ancien Regime France", Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 82,1 (2008).

Potter, Ursula , "To School or not to School: Tudor views on education in drama and literature", Parergon 25.1 (2008).

Spinks, Jennifer, "Jakob Rueff's 1554 Trostbuchle: a Zurich physician explains and interprets monstrous births", Intellectual History Review 18.1 [Special issue on Humanism and Medicine in the Renaissance edited by Susan Broomhall and Yasmin Haskell] (2008).

Van Gent, Jacqueline , Magic, Body and the Self in Eighteenth Century Sweden (Leiden and Boston: Brill Academic Publisher, 2008). The book discusses 18th century witchcraft practices in Sweden, and includes discussion of children as victims of malevolent magic.

FORTHCOMING

Bailey, Merridee L. 'A Formula for Courtesy in some English Vernacular Poems: Conventional Traits, the use of Common Language, and the Creation of Genre' in Formulas in Medieval England, Association des Medievistes Anglicistes de l'Enseignement Superieur, (Forthcoming 2009). Looks at linguistic formulas in courtesy poems aimed at young readers.

Broomhall, Susan, "The Price of Love: Negotiating Non-marital Sex and Pregnancy in Early Sixteenth-Century Paris", in (see below) Cathy McClive ed. Examines how women arranged legal agreements to look after children born of extramarital sex, considering expectations of care/education of such children.

Broomhall, Susan, "Le prix de l'amour: negociations apres des relations sexuelles et des grossesses illegitimes a Paris au debut du XVIe siecle" in Cathy McClive and Nicole Pellegrin, eds. Femmes en fleurs: Femmes en Corps du Moyen Age aux Lumieres (Saint-Etienne: Presses universitaires de Saint-Etienne, 2008). In press.

Broomhall, Susan, "Letters make the family: Nassau family correspondence at the turn of the seventeenth century" in Julie Campbell, Anne Larsen and Gabriella Eschrich, eds. Crossing Borders: Early-Modern Women and Communities of Letters (Aldershot: Ashgate, forthcoming 2009).

Broomhall, Susan, "Health and Science" in Sandra Cavallo and Silvia Evangelisti, eds. A Cultural History of Childhood and Family (Oxford: Berg, forthcoming 2009).

Broomhall, Susan, "Production and Reproduction: Contextualising Women's Writing as Labor", in Colette H. Winn, ed. Teaching Early Modern Women Writers (MLA publications: forthcoming 2009). Looks at the way in which women described their writing as a form of labour, especially reproductive, as well as in relation to their own duties as mothers, and as authors of texts to inform children, youths and other mothers.

Broomhall, Susan, "Women, work and power in the female guilds of fifteenth and sixteenth-century Rouen" in Megan Cassidy-Welch and Peter Sherlock, eds. Practices of Gender in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe (Turnhout: Brepols, 2008). In press. Explores the workings of two female guilds in 16thC Rouen, including some brief mentions of apprenticeship systems and experiences for young women.

Maddern, Philippa, with Stephanie Tarbin, "Life-Cycle" in Sandra Cavalloa and Silvia Evangelisti, eds. A Cultural History of Childhood and Family (Oxford: Berg, forthcoming 2009).

Potter, Ursula, "Elizabethan Drama and the Instruction of a Christian Woman by Juan Luis Vives" in Juanita Ruys ed. What Nature Does not teach: Didactic Literature in the Medieval and Early Modern Periods, Disputatio 15 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2008).

Potter, Ursula, "The Spectre of the Shrew and the Lash of the Rod: Gendering Pedagogy in The Disobedient Child" in Jonathan Walker and Paul D. Streufert eds. Academic Drama in English, 1500-1700 (Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing Ltd.).

Spinks, Jennifer, "Monstrous births and Counter-Reformation visual polemics: Johann Nas and the 1569 Ecclesia Militans", Sixteenth Century Journal (forthcoming 2008).

Spinks, Jennifer, Monstrous Births and Visual Culture in Sixteenth Century Germany (London: Pickering and Chatto, forthcoming 2009).

Spinks, Jennifer and Susan Broomhall, "Representing women's labour at the dawn of the Golden Age: Isaac Claesz. van Swanenburg's Old and New Trades (c.1594-c.1612)", Cultural and Social History (2008). Includes discussion of children in the images, as well as their role in the textile trades at this era.

UNDER REVIEW
Bailey, Merridee L. "Children's Literature and John Newbery: A Reassessment of Early Books for Children and Young People" (under review: Journal of Childhood in the Past).

Broomhall, Susan and Jacqueline van Gent, "Corresponding Affections: Emotional Exchange among William the Silent's children" (under review: Journal of Social History).

Broomhall, Susan and Jacqueline van Gent, "In the name of the father: Conceptualising pater familias in the letters of William the Silent's children" (under review: Renaissance Quarterly).

Sharpe, Pamela, "Explaining the Short Stature of the Poor: Childhood Chronic Disease and Growth in Nineteenth-Century England" (under review: Economic History Review).

Tarbin, Stephanie, "Caring for Poor and Fatherless Children in London, c. 1350-1550" (under review: Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth).

GRANTS APPLIED FOR

Susan Broomhall and Jacqueline van Gent (CIs), ARC Discovery Project "Nassau family correspondence".

Philippa Maddern (CI), Lesley O'Brien (APD), Stephanie Tarbin (Research Fellow), ARC Discovery project: "'Of Tendir Age': Children's experiences in England c.1350-1650".

OTHER ACTIVITIES

Merridee Bailey, "Between the Household and the School: Socialising the Child in England, c. 1400-1600". PhD, ANU, 2008.

Jenny Spinks, 2008 Grete Sondheimer Fellowship (two months duration). The Warburg Institute, London.