Julia M. Gossard, Assistant Professor at Utah State University, has won the 2017 Fass-Sandin Article Prize for “Tattletales: Childhood and Authority in Eighteenth-Century France,” The Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth vol. 10, no. 2 (2017).
A committee of three judges chaired by Kelly Duke Bryant of Rowan University, including Sacha Hepburn of the University of Warwick and Nick Syrett of Kansas University, examined 16 nominated articles published in the field during 2017, and praised Gossard's work with these words:
"Focusing on children who attended charity schools in eighteenth-century Lyon and Paris and who complied with school regulations by reporting members of their families or communities for exhibiting immoral or criminal behavior, Gossard shows that parental, and especially patriarchal, authority over the family was not as complete as others have suggested. Indeed, through school-based surveillance and reporting mechanisms, some children could access certain types of power within the household, though in the service of another hierarchy. The committee praised Gossard for her efforts to understand children’s actions and experiences, even as she recognized the limitations of her sources in revealing motive, for her attention to hierarchies of age and gender, and for her compelling argument."
The Fass-Sandin Best Article Prize in English is awarded every year by the Society for the History of Children and Youth for the best peer-reviewed article published in the field. Here is a list of previous winners:
2016: Mellissa J. Klapper (Chair), Jonas Qvarsebo, Jane Nicholas
Brian Rouleau, “‘In Praise of Trash’: Series Fiction Fan Mail and the Challenges of Children’s Devotion.” Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth 9 (Fall 2016): 403-423.
2015: Mellissa J. Klapper (Chair), Jonas Qvarsebo, Jane Nicholas
Lydia Murdoch, “Carrying the Pox: The Use of Children and Ideals of Childhood in Early British and Imperial Campaigns Against Smallpox,” Journal of Social History, vol. 48, no. 3 (Spring 2015): 511-535.
2014: Simon Sleight (chair), Corinne Field, Corrie Decker
Barbara Young Welke, “The Cowboy Suit Tragedy: Spreading Risk, Owning Hazard in the Modern American Consumer Economy,” Journal of American History (June 2014), 97-121.
2013: Robin Bernstein (chair), Melissa Klapper, Pamela Riney-Kehberg
Nicholas Syrett, “‘I did and I Don’t Regret It’: Child Marriage and the Contestation of Childhood in the United States,” Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth (vol. 6, Spring 2013).
2012: Barbara Beatty (chair), Julia Grant, Marie Clark Nelson
Ishita Pande, “Coming of Age: Law, sex, and Childhood in Late Colonial India,” Gender & History vol. 24, no. 1 (April 2012).
2011: Tamara Myers (chair), William S. Bush, Jeanine Graham
Aaron L. Alcorn, “Flying into Modernity: Model Airplanes, Consumer Culture, and the Making of Modern Boyhood in the Early Twentieth Century,” History and Technology (June 2009).
2009: Tamara Myers, Rebecca de Schweinitz, Ning de Coninck-Smith
Susan J. Pearson, “Infantile Specimens: Showing Babies in Nineteenth-Century America,” Journal of Social History (December 2008).
2007: Heather Munro Prescott, Birgitte Soland, Joe Austin
Tamara Myers, "Embodying Delinquency: Boys' Bodies, Sexuality, and Juvenile Justice History in Early-Twentieth-Century Quebec,” Journal of the History of Sexuality (October 2005)
2005: Joe Austin (Chair), Paula Fass, Heather Prescott
Timothy Gilfoyle, "Street-Rats and Gutter-Snipes: Child Pickpockets and Street Culture in New York City, 1850-1900" Journal of Social History (2004)
2003: Priscilla Ferguson Clement (chair), Bruce Lindsay, Gail Murray
Mona Gleason, "Disciplining the Student Body: Schooling and the Construction of Canadian Children's Bodies, 1930-1960," History of Education Quarterly (2001).