Programs > Academic Programs > CHAViC

2008 Conference

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

November 14-15, 2008 Worcester, Massachusetts

February 13-14, 2009 Princeton, New Jersey

This conference is 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 will address aspects of eighteenth and nineteenth-century textual, visual, or material culture that relate to the experience or representation of childhood.

 

 

~ Schedule and Program ~

Friday, November 14:

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"

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, 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, 1857-80"

Session 3: 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, 1840-65"
• 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"

Break at the Goddard-Daniels House

Session 4: Patricia Crain, New York University

• 6:00 p.m. 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"

Saturday, November 15

Session 5: 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 6: 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, Salem State College, "'The Date of My Martyrdom': Visual and Textual Representations of Nineteenth-Century Girls' Transition to Womanly Wardrobes"

Lunch Break

Session 7: 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, My Oliver Optic/William T. Adams Collection

Session 8: 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 and Reception

February 13-14, 2009
Princeton, New Jersey

Session 1: "Scribbling" Children

• John Pollack, University of Pennsylvania, "Reading and Writing in Colonial Philadelphia: Views from the Quaker School Archives"
• Desirée Henderson, University of Texas, Arlington, "Pen, Ink, and Paper: Writing Instruments and Female Literacy in The Wide, Wide World and Little Women"
• Kim Nusco, John Carter Brown Library, "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Girl: The Journals of Sarah Gooll Putnam"

Session 2: Uncontrolled Youth

• Barbara Hochman, Ben Gurion University of the Negev, "Beyond Piety and Social Conscience: Uncle Tom's Cabin as an Antebellum Children's Book"
• Elizabeth Barnes, College of William and Mary, "'The Children of Boston': Louisa May Alcott's Little Men"
• Kristen Proehl, College of William and Mary, "Tomboys in Rag Alley: Poverty, Sympathy and Girlhood in E. D. E. N. Southworth's The Hidden Hand"

Session 3: Preparing for a Life at Work

• Laura Wasowicz, American Antiquarian Society, "Of Beggars, Ballad Singers, and Sailors: Errant Children in the Picture Books of William Charles"
• Seth Cotlar, Willamette University, "'When I was your age . . .': Nostalgic Representations of the Recent Past in American Children's Literature of the 1830s and 1840s"
• Paul Bolin, University of Texas at Austin, "Preparing Children for the World of Work: Influences of Legislation in the Proliferation of Drawing Manuals and Materials for Youngsters in the Northeastern United States, 1860-1876"

Session 4: Learning How to Look

• Brett Mizelle, California State University, Long Beach, "'Never will I ill use a dumb animal, or tamely see another do it': Modeling Proper Spectatorship and Feeling in Early Nineteenth-Century Children's Literature"
• Peter Benes, Dublin Seminar for New England Folk Life, Boston University, "'A Dutchman skating on ice in the midst of summer': Magic Lantern Entertainments for Children before 1830"
• Ellen Donovan, Middle Tennessee State University, "Circuses in Late Nineteenth-Century Children's Periodical Literature"

Session 5: What Did You See at School Today?

• Martin Brückner, University of Delaware, "Maps in the Classroom: Picture Pedagogy, Object Lessons, and the Cult of Cartifacts"
• Jessica Collier, University of California, Irvine, "Crossing a Bare Common School: Transcendental Pedagogy and the Architecture of the Classroom"
• Katharine Martinez, Harvard University, "Civilizing Young Minds and Bodies: Picture Study and the Schoolroom Decoration Movement"

Session 6: Learning Race and Place

• Patricia Johnston, Salem State College, "'I' is for 'Italian' and 'Images,' and Other Ideas about Catholics and Art in Children's Books during the Early Republic"
• Anna Mae Duane, University of Connecticut, "Performing Freedom at The New York African Free School"
• Elizabeth Kuebler-Wolf, University of St. Francis, "The Early Development of Southern Chivalry and the Visual History of Children in the Slavery Debate"

Session 7: Closets, Doors, and Locks: Childhood Circumscribed

• Courtney A. Weikle-Mills, University of Pittsburgh, "'How art thou affected, poor child, in the reading of this book?': Cotton Mather's Children's Books and the Making of Closet Readers"
• Karen Sánchez-Eppler, Amherst College, "Doors onto Childhood"
• Marta Gutman, City College of New York, "Condition and Consciousness: Childhood in a California Orphanage"

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

Registration

The registration fee is $60, the graduate student registration fee is $30, and the cost of the Saturday lunch on November 15 is $10. The registration fee is for the Worcester portion of the conference only.

Registration and payment are due by Friday, October 30, 2008.

Print a registration form

or register online

 

Accommodations

A block of rooms is being held at the Crowne Plaza Hotel. Please mention the American Antiquaraian Society and the CHAVIC conference when you make your reservation. The rate is $99 plus tax. The cut-off date is 3 p.m. on October 27. Call (508) 791-1600 to make reservations. Book rooms early because November is a busy time of year in Worcester and rooms sell out quickly. Contact Ann-Catherine Rapp at 508-471-2135 if you have questions.

Other Worcester hotels include:

• the new Hilton Garden Inn
  (508) 753-5700
• Courtyard by Marriott
  (508) 363-0300
• Hampton Inn
  (508) 757-0400

 

~ about CHAViC

~ about PHBAC

~ about the collection of children's literature at AAS

 

Previous CHAViC conferences

~ Fields of Vision: The Material and Visual Culture of New England, 1600-1830 (2007)
co-sponsored with the Colonial Society of Massachusetts

~ Visualizing the Past: A One-Day Conference for K-12 Educators (2006)
co-sponsored with the New England History Teachers Association

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