2018 in Review
In 2018, the Society for the History of Children and Youth had many successes. We published a comprehensive 2017 survey report, we continued organization for our 2019 bi-annual conference in Sydney, Australia, and we launched a new and revitalized website that includes featured students, books, and commentaries.
In this year end review, we reflect on some of the features and prizes that appeared on the revitalized website. We also look back at some of the best tweets we sent, and some of the best tweets we received from our members. Links to the various posts are included throughout our year in review, as well as twitter handles so you can follow our members as they continue their varied careers.
Online Community
We also expanded our online presence by continuing to regularly post updates on Twitter (our twitter handle is @shcyhome), we added a YouTube channel (you can subscribe, here), and most importantly, we formally uploaded our podcast. You can follow our podcast either through our host, PineCast, Google, or iTunes.
When our CFP went live in 2018, it was viewed 3 391 times, and viewers engaged with the tweet 118 times. Throughout the year, conference tweets received significant attention.
Distributed Prizes
We saw our members receive the following prizes related to the history of children and youth:
2017 Outreach Grant
Dr. Silke Hackenesch (University of Kassel) (@hackenesch)
M.J. Maynes (University of Minnesota)
Graduate student grant: Victoria Holec (University of Lethbridge) (@VictoriaHolec)
2017 Fass-Sandin Prizes
2017 Fass-Sandin Prize (Spanish and French)
Fábio Macedo (School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences, France)
2017 Fass-Sandin Article Prize
Julia M. Gossard (Utah State University) (@jmgossard)
2017 JHCY Article Prize
Julia M. Gossard (Utah State University) (@jmgossard)
Everyone got excited when the Girls' History and Culture Network published their Summer 2018 newsletter. This tweet received 1 651 impressions.
2017 Grace Abbot Prize
Richard Ivan Jobs (Pacific University, Oregon) (@richardivanjobs)
Featured Students
Katherine S. Cartwright (College of William and Mary)
Katherine showed us how she encouraged her students to engage with artifacts and primary source material to promote their interest in the history of children and youth. She was also our first featured student in this new series. You can view the video she filmed for her student feature.
Peter Skagius (University of Linköping, Sweden)
Peter (@PSkagius) looked at how Swedish media portrayed child psychology and psychiatry to the public. We took a glance at various media clippings and at Peter's research to see that the mental health of children improved, not only with pharmaceutical intervention, but also with the assistance of social institutions such as governments and school systems.
Featured Commentary
IHRC Symposium Commentary on Migration across Global Regimes of Childhood
The focus of the 2018 Immigration History and Research Centre was a migration across global regimes of childhood. Kelly Condit-Shrestha gave a think-piece on the outcomes of the symposium and how to place our historical knowledge of the experiences of childhood into the fraught present political climate.
2017 SHCY Survey Report
In this survey report, the SHCY showed how its members felt about an array of issues. We asked questions about what kind of digital presence our members desire from the society, where are members are situated globally and professionally, what they think the responsibility of the SHCY is, what aspirations our members have for SHCY's bi-annual conferences, and much more.
Against Agency
Karen Vallgårda, Kristine Alexander (@KristineAlexand), & Stephanie Olsen (@Olsensid) question the limitations of the term agency when studying the history of childhood and youth.
Our second most popular tweet of the year (after our CFP announcement) was when we went live on 1 October 2018. We received 3 002 views for this tweet.
Revisited: CHC Season 2, Episode 4: Roundtable Discussion with Marah Gubar and Shauna Vey
Martin Woodside, Shauna Vey, and Marah Gubar (@MarahGubar) looked at the role of child actors in nineteenth century entertainment. You can listen to the roundtable discussion on the SHCY podcast. This episode revisited an earlier episode in our Childhood: History and Critique series.
Featured Books
Our greatest contribution to the new website in 2018 was the opportunity to put into focus the new and exciting publications of our members in the field of childhood and youth history.
Progressive Mothers, Better Babies: Race, Public Health, and the State in Brazil, 1850-1945
Author: Okezi T. Otovo
Dr. Premo helped to draw lots of attention to our first ever featured book by Okezi OT. Otovo with this tweet that received lots of love from Twitter.
Otovo's book explores the maternalist movement in Brazil that lasted from the mid-nineteenth century to 1945.
Please listen here for the interview with Okezi T. Otovo and her colleague, Bianca Premo (@BiancaPremo).
American Child Bride: A History of Marriage and Minors in the United States
Author: Nicholas L. Syrett
American Child Bride looks at the history of marriage in the United States, as it relates to minors, from the early American period until the present.
Please listen here for Dr. Syrett's interview with his colleague, Stacey Vanderhurst.
Revisited: CHC Season 1, Episode 4: Developmental Thinking
Author: André Turmel
This Featured Book is a throwback to an episode of Childhood: History and Critique and includes an interview between Dr. Patrick Ryan and Dr. André Turmel. They discuss Turmel's 2008 publication, A Historical Sociology of Childhood.
Listen to Part 1 and Part 2 of these episodes on our SHCY podcast.
Childhood and Colonial Modernity in Egypt
Author: Heidi Morrison
Morrison explores the lives and agency of children in Egypt during the colonial period from the late-nineteenth to early-twentieth centuries.
Please listen here for the interview with Heidi Morrison and her peer, Nancy Gallagher.
Fostering on the Farm: Child Placement in the Rural Midwest
Author: Megan Birk
This monograph explores how child fostering programs worked in the rural midwest United States between the 1870s and the 1920s.
Please also enjoy listening to the interview between Megan Birk and Jennifer Robin Terry.
Child Soldiers in the Western Imagination: From Patriots to Victims
Author: David M. Rosen
Rosen mixes intimate stories of childhood participation in conflict with a critical analysis of how society has changed its perception of the child soldier since the American Revolution.
Please listen here for the interview with David M. Rosen and his colleague, Robert Houle.
When Vallgårda, Alexander, and Olsen's commentary went up, it garnered 2 716 impressions.
Revisited: CHC Season 2, Episode 1: Racial Innocence
Author: Robin Bernstein (@RobinMBernstein)
Another throwback to the Childhood: History and Critique series, this time centred on the 2011 publication of Racial Innocence: Performing American Childhood from Slavery to Civil Rights.
Listen to this episode of the SHCY podcast.
The Best Possible Immigrants: International Adoption
Author: Rachel Rains Winslow
Winslow explores the history of transnational adoption in the United States, with a particular emphasis on adoption between the USA and Greece and South Korea in the twentieth century.
Please listen here for the interview the author and her colleague, Heather Keaney.
Thank-you!
For a great year, we look forward to what 2019 brings.
Fireworks over Sydney, Australia during New Year's Eve, 2006-2007. Sydney is home to the 2019 bi-annual conference hosted by SHCY this July.
Please remember: if you are interested in contributing to the SHCY website, if you have any news or announcements (your new publications, awards you have received, good professional news), please e-mail us at shcyhome@gmail.com, or the Digital Fellow, Carla Joubert.
About the Author
Carla Joubert is the Digital Fellow 
for the Society for the History of Children and Youth. This is her second year working with SHCY to develop the organization's online media presence. She is a PhD candidate at the University of Western Ontario in London, Ontario. Her research is a comparative analysis of the role that white women played in the settler colonization of the Zuid-Afrikaansche Republiek and the Canadian Prairie West in the nineteenth century. Her supervisor is Dr. Laurel Shire. She is also the head organizer of the Network of Women in History, and the Digital Research Assistant for her university's History Department.