Jutta Ahlbeck - Childhood, Literature, and Science: Fragile Subjects

Childhood, Literature and Science convincingly points to the variety of ways in which children and childhood are something highly evasive, multifaceted, and dependent upon time, space, and the available assortment of discursive categories. This impressive compilation of studies from scholars in the humanities and social sciences gives us new important insights of childhood, and contributes to the interdisciplinary field of Childhood Studies.

By stretching the analyses from the Enlightenment until the present day, across science, literature, life writings, and social policy, a complex narrative of western childhood is unfolded. Authors examine childrens literature, psychological testing situations, media debates on children who commit crimes, debates on reproductive technologies, autobiographical fiction, photographs of child patients, and much more, and the reader will be highly rewarded. It becomes clear that the category we in our everyday lives call children carries many different meanings and layers. This volume also gives us a badly-needed readiness for action as citizens. As the editors write: The notion of childhood is always, at the same time, a notion of adulthood.

Mats Brjesson, Professor and Director of the Section for Child and Youth Studies, Stockholm University, Sweden

The rich essays collected in Childhood, Literature and Science demonstrate that research grounded in language analysis and literary criticism has become indispensable for historicising our sense of childhood and youth. The discourses of childhood cannot be captured with essentialist dualisms between purity/ innocence and order/discipline, any more than the figures of childhood will come into focus by repeating the obvious truth that childhood is culturally constructed. Readers seeking something more robust will find within these pages thick descriptions and close readings of ideal, subversive, normal, sick, transformative, evil, victimized, and lost childhoods that crossed national boundaries and extended over long periods into the living present.

Patrick J. Ryan, President of the Society for the History of Children and Youth, Kings University College at Western University Canada

How do we understand, imagine and remember childhood? In what ways do cultural representations and scientific discourses meet in their ways of portraying children?

Childhood, Literature and Science aims to answer these questions by tracing how images of childhood(s) and children in Western modernity are entangled with notions of innocence and fragility, but also with sin and evilness. Indeed, this interdisciplinary collection investigates how different child figures emerge or disappear in imaginative and social representations, in the memories of adult selves, and in expert knowledge. Questions about childhood in Western modernity, culture and science are also addressed through insightful analysis of a variety of materials from the Enlightenment age to the present day such as fiction, life narratives, visual images, scientific texts and public writings.

Analysing childhood as a discursive construction, Childhood, Literature and Science will appeal to scholars as well as undergraduate and postgraduate students interested in fields such as: Childhood Studies, History, Gender Studies, Cultural Studies, Literature and Sociology of the Family.

Jutta Ahlbeck is a sociologist and Senior Researcher at the Department of Culture, History and Philosophy at bo Akademi University, Finland.

Pivi Lappalainen is Professor of Finnish Literature at the University of Turku, Finland.

Kati Launis is Adjunct Professor of Finnish Literature at the University of Turku, Finland.

Kirsi Tuohela is Adjunct Professor of Cultural History at the University of Turku, Finland.

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Childhood, Literature and Science

Fragile Subjects

Edited by Jutta Ahlbeck, Pivi Lappalainen, Kati Launis and Kirsi Tuohela

Childhood, Literature and Science

Fragile Subjects

Edited by

Jutta Ahlbeck, Pivi Lappalainen, Kati Launis and Kirsi Tuohela

First published 2018

by Routledge

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2018 selection and editorial matter Jutta Ahlbeck, Pivi Lappalainen, Kati Launis and Kirsi Tuohela; individual chapters, the contributors

The right of Jutta Ahlbeck, Pivi Lappalainen, Kati Launis and Kirsi Tuohela to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

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ISBN: 978-1-138-28240-7 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-1-315-27078-4 (ebk)

Jutta Ahlbeck, PhD, Senior Researcher, bo Akademi University, Finland.

Pivi Lappalainen, Professor at University of Turku, Finland.

Kati Launis, PhD, Adjuct Professor (Docent) at University of Turku, Finland.

Kirsi Tuohela, PhD, Adjunct Professor (Docent) at University of Turku, Finland.

Shaul Bar-Haim, PhD, Lecturer at University of Essex, UK.

Eleanor F. W. Betts, PhD, Queen Mary University of London & the National Trust, UK.

Leticia Fernndez-Fontecha Rumeu, PhD, Postdoctoral Researcher at Colombia University, USA.