1. How does our perspective of the politicized child contradict/confirm our handling of child soldiers and their experiences?
2. Why are children described as heroic or exceptional whenever they behave in the same manner a typical adult would?
3. What are some ways parents and educators can encourage/acknowledge their children’s political/social awareness while still making great efforts to protect their youthful innocence?
4. Why refer to children as the future of society when they’re often excluded from the present narrative? How can they be expected to craft a future without context or experience?

Chapter 1 of Black Girlhood in the Nineteenth Century, Wright addresses the Republic’s view of children and how black children fit in that view.

•  How are the views of children today similar or different to the views held by the republic in the 1800s? 
• What is considered as an “ideal childhood” today? To what extent are black children/ children of color able to have this “ideal childhood” in today’? 

Wright’s book and Rosen’s article discuss literature’s portrayal of childhood.  

• Are contemporary literature and films more child-friendly or have they only successfully found more subtle ways to portray the past views of childhood? 
• Rosen’s article refers to the films Harry Porter and Hunger Games depicting children having to engage in war or protest to save the day. Today we see children taking the charge in the fight against climate change. How is children’s participation in social/environmental protest negative or positive to their childhood? 

1. Chapter 1 explains the roles of White abolitionists who intended to save t“unprotected” black girls from their circumstances. Were these abolitionists (or “white saviors”) trying to save black girls from the dangers of society or were they trying to protect them from the dangers of their blackness?
2. On p.172, the author states, “Both writers had advised black girls to carefully monitor their outward appearance and behavior so they could take advantage of new opportunities. They believed that dressing and acting correctly would open doors for all blacks, and for the black girls in particular”. Do you think dressing and acting respectably opened doors for African American girls in the early 20th century? Do these acts of respectability open doors for black girls today?
3. Chapter 2 discusses the roles of youthful black girls as having agency and being able to showcase their intelligence. At what point in their lives is this youthful innocence lost for black girls? Is this the time frame for non-black girls?

As a transracial and transnational adoptee scholar, organizer, and activist, I’m interested in using postcolonial feminist frameworks to analyze the material and cultural productions of adopted people (who are most often adopted as infants, children, and less often as youth), especially within transracial and transnational adoption.

By productions of adopted people, I mean the way people, namely infants and children who eventually become adults, are made into transracial and transnational adoptees. This occurs materially, for example, through their/our legal and embodied transfer from families of origin through adoption industries and overall child welfare systems, often moving from working class communities of color (and in the case of transnational adoption) from countries impacted by colonialism, imperialism, racism, militarism, “natural disasters”, etc to middle/upper class predominantly white populations in western countries that have participated in/profited from colonization, imperialism, militarism, racism, etc. This production also occurs culturally, for example, when the social phenomena of adoption and adoptee subject (not necessarily the adopted person themselves) reinforce state-sanctioned norms of the heteronormative patriarchal nuclear family and geopolitical value systems (i.e. transnational political power dynamics between western countries and “developing” countries). I’m also very interested in sitting with how these productions affect the holistic well being of adopted people, communities/families of origin, birth/first families, and groups/families vulnerable to separation. These are the kinds of things I’m interested in exploring more broadly.

In my workshop, I would like to further investigate the confluence of social injustices, adoption industries, and foster care systems. I’m curious about how feminist approaches in Gender Studies have interacted with Children and Youth Studies on issues related to adoption. I’d like to pair some perspectives that may not often be heard next to each other, such as adoption scholars and adoption abolition activists to reflect the possible overlaps/gaps/tension points and visions/desires for the future. I might use some of my own legal adoption documentation to explore the language invoked to declare my adoption official, and how this demonstrates some ways the law conceives of and produces the child, their best interests, and the adoptive parental figures. Who knows! Anyway, I’m excited about potential collaborations with people interested in the above. Please reach out to me for a chat if you’re keen. Thanks!

I think I would like to explore more about child sexuality or child trauma. Child sexuality seem to be almost a taboo area of study. A very sensitive topic with many complexities. The main questions being, do child have a sexuality? What age is too young for sexual exploration? Child trauma is interesting as well, for what does it take for a child to become traumatize? Can trauma be healed? Though, the topic of child trauma isn’t as sensitive to talk about, I’m sure it’s even more complex than child sexuality. Both are definitely interesting topics to me.

In the workshop session, I would like to introduce you my second year research project titled “Exploring Parents’ Perception and Design of Out of School Time”, for which I collected and analyzed data and am in the process of organizing and writing up my findings alongside my literature review. I’m trying to understand how parents’ socio-economic status, neighborhood, housing situation, school choice, race and ethnicity are shaping children’s free time in NYC. I’m analyzing my data (some interviews & demographic information and online documents) by using dynamic narrative inquiry, a methodology that looks at narratives coming from different perspectives, positions and genres in a particular issue of concern as interacting with one another in “social network environments” (Dauite 2014), as all related and talking to one another without literally doing so.

During the workshop time I’m planning to briefly introduce my research and my data but I mainly need your help for my literature review, which I outline in the following paragraphs. It will probably be two sections as such with the content some of which I noted down under. These are the headings that are speaking to my data even though the organization might change a little bit afterwards. I would be very happy if you’d share with me your literature suggestions touching upon these topics I mentioned. I want to write my final paper in the form of this literature review.

–Historical Overview of the Out of School Time in NYC

emerging as an idea of supporting low to middle-income children after children’s participation in labor force dropped and school participation increased, urban change during that time (1880s-1930s…), investment in playgrounds and organized play and after-school programs and then disinvestment in play staff and recess…

the notion of free time of children as “risk and opportunity” (Halpern 2002; 2014)

organized time for well-off – less and less free play (?)

–Parenting ideologies and practices in the context of neoliberalization of education and childhood

safety and security concerns of parents in the city environment

high regulation time and space-wise

ideas about child development : learning over play

individualization of responsibilities as reality (pay for everything, it all depends your social capital etc, parents as partners in school organization, hyperattentive and controlled…) – transferring these to children for upper classes or parenting anxieties – what are we going to do and how are we gonna make sure child is going to be fine..

disinvestment in public services – neighborhood distribution (upper east side, williamsburg vs. flushing….)

no child left behind – assessments and academic pressures

erasure of recess

child as an investment

Thanks all for your help and suggestions,

Bengi

HI All,

If anyone wants to talk about YA dystopias/ speculative fiction for their tailored sessions, that is definitely an interest of mine…CH

Maritha. 09/19/2019. Prof. Carrie Hintz.

Course: Introduction to Childhood and Youth Studies.
Readings:
Eugene F. Provenzo, Jr. (2009)” Friedrich Froebel’s Gifts: Connecting the Spiritual and Aesthetic to the real world of Play and Learning”.
Carrie Hintz and Eric, L. Tribunella (2019). “Historicizing Childhood” from Reading Children’s Literature: A Critical Introduction.

Froebel promotes dialectical thinking at early age; How beneficial is dialectical thinking for children?
Who would you rather be a child raised by Froebel or a child raised by Rousseau, explain why?
When and up to what age are parents responsible for the acts/behavior of their child?
What is your personal understanding of spirituality and how does is it influence a child’s development?
The existing competing conceptualizations of children affect how children perceive themselves. How can parents and teachers assist and guide a positive development of children’s self-perception?

1. Are Froebel’s gifts still useful? is it simply child’s play or concrete learning?
2. With yoga and meditation being added to school’s curriculum for students to build relationships with themselves, could this lead to contemporary educators reintroducing Froebel’s work into their classrooms?
3. Does religion or spirituality have a place in our school system?
4. Has religion deeply influence how adults view, treat, hurt and understand children?
5. Is a “childhood” the inherit right of a child or is it a privilege?

Childhood Studies Questions – September 12

• How do remembering our childhood experiences add to our understanding of children or childhood? How do we avoid the “nostalgic distance” that Coats (2001) is talking about, in our everyday or disciplinary narratives?
• Why is the US not ratifying the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child?
• What does “children as a social class” mean? Can we talk about a unified interest(s) of children?
• Do all children have the same needs when it comes to attachment?
• In which issues related to children relying on theory might be a good source rather than seeking for measurement/assessment/pragmatic “solutions”?