Document Type

Book Chapter

Publication Date

2021

Embargo Period

4-16-2023

Publication Title

Children and Youth as Subjects, Objects, Agents: Innovative Approaches to Research Across Space and Time

Abstract

This chapter draws from a study of education in middle-class German families around 1800 to examine the role of scholars’ emotions in the archive of childhood and youth. It takes its cue from growing interest in emotions – a critical element of subjectivity – among historians of childhood, and the call for self-reflexive scholarship among social scientists. What part do the historian’s emotions play in trying to discern, name, and interpret historical representations of children’s feelings? How do emotional frameworks and memories as scholars guide our understanding of emotions like love, fear, hope, pride, resentment, attachment in historical sources? Could careful reflection on the historian’s feeling provide evidence, allowing us to historicize the emotions expected of and about young people over time? And what dangers might researchers’ emotional responses present in the work of historical interpretation? In raising these questions, Bruce proposes a set of methodological considerations for studying childhood and youth.

First Page

33

Last Page

45

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-63632-6_3

Comments

This is an accepted manuscript of the published chapter in Children and Youth as Subjects, Objects, Agents: Innovative Approaches to Research Across Space and Time, edited by Deborah Levinson, Mary Jo Maynes, and Frances Vavrus. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2021. The final published version can be accessed in the physical book or through the publisher's website.

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