Childhood at the AHA: Seattle, 2005

Colleen A. Vasconcellos, Kennesaw State University

Like most traveling to Seattle this year for the 119th Annual Meeting of the American Historical Association, my conference experience began in the airport. Sitting at the gate waiting for my flight, I looked around and saw a veritable Who’s Who of Historians. One traveler on my flight even commented that if a tsunami were to hit the Greater Seattle area, the historical profession as we know it would cease to exist.

Even before my flight was called, I heard snippets of a variety of conversations between historians and graduate students who had already switched their brains to AHA mode. Some discussed the stress of interviews and job searches, a few gave sometimes detailed previews of their paper presentations to those who asked, and others stated that they were just going to the conference to catch up with the colleagues and friends that they only see at the AHA every year. I was one of the latter, visiting Seattle to catch up with friends and peers, but secretly hoping to snag an interview or two at this year’s Job Register.

As I crossed the country on my crowded flight, I flipped through the AHA program in order to formulate a plan of attack against the weekend’s hectic array of activities. This year’s theme, “Archives & Artifacts,” included over three hundred sessions on a wide variety of topics. Furthermore, the Book Exhibit contained more than one hundred fifty booths on the sixth floor of the Convention Center. For those of you who have been to the AHA, you all know the difficulty that comes with coordinating your schedule with the papers you would like to see. This year was no different, but I did make a note of two panels and a few papers on childhood that I definitely wanted to attend.

On the morning of Friday, January 7th, I started my day extremely early, a little jet lagged and very much on East Coast time. After a leisurely breakfast with some of my fellow East Coast friends, I arrived at the Washington State Convention Center just as the Book Exhibit opened. This is always my favorite part of the AHA, and I was virtually alone as I wandered around the various booths. My first stop was at the University of North Carolina Press, who allowed an early peak at Holly Brewer’s book By Birth or By Consent: Children, Law, and the Anglo-American Revolution in Authority (May 2005). After looking through UNC’s Spring/Summer 2005 catalog, I made a note of the April 2005 publication of Crimes Against Children: Sexual Violence and Legal Culture in New York City, 1880-1960 by Stephen Robertson. Meandering my way around the booths and filling my bag with fliers and book catalogs, I saw a few other books on childhood. M.E. Sharpe announced the publication of Hugh D. Hindman’s Child Labor: An American History, while Palgram MacMillan advertised the February publication of Wilma King’s African American Childhoods: Historical Perspectives from Slavery to Civil Rights. I also saw Elisheva Baumgarten’s Mothers and Children: Jewish Family Life in Medieval Europe (Princeton), and Samuel Hynes’ The Growing Seasons: An American Boyhood Before the War (Penguin). I am sure that there were others on display, but as everyone knows, the Book Exhibit borders on sensory overload. Furthermore, after purchasing more books than my small suitcase allowed, I was forced to leave the Book Exhibit before further damage could be done to my VISA card. I am, after all, just an adjunct.

Sadly, I was so fixed on the Book Exhibit that I missed Nikki Marie Taylor’s paper entitled “Fugitive Slave Mothers and their Children in Antebellum Ohio,” part of a 9:30 AM panel called “Redefining Citizenship: Free Black Women and the State in Antebellum America.” After attending a luncheon for the Conference of Latin American History in the Space Needle, I returned to the Convention Center just in time for the first full panel on childhood held at this year's AHA. Moderated by Wilma King, “Before They Came of Age: Black Children in Slavery and Freedom” focused on three specific aspects of child-rearing and childhood as they related to peoples of African descent living in the Caribbean and the United States. In her paper entitled “Children in the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade to Jamaica in the Late Eighteenth Century,” Audra Diptee discussed the enslavement of African children in the Bight of Biafra, the Gold Coast, and West Central Africa, arguing that children were victims of the slave trade despite low demand for children in Jamaica. Juanita de Barros followed with an examination of “health missionaries” and their work to reduce infant mortality and improve child-rearing practices in the post-Emancipation British Caribbean with her paper entitled “Infant Mortality and Social Reform in the Post-Slavery British Caribbean. The final paper of this panel, “’Continual Fret about the Children:’ Growing Up Black in New York City during the Gilded Age,” took the audience to late 19th century New York City. In this paper, Marcy S. Sacks discussed the experiences of black children of poor parents, and the complex relationship that evolved between their parents and the white reformers of the region. After a brief commentary by Steven Mintz, the panel closed after a positive question and answer session.

Saturday was a free day for me, and I spent it with some friends now living in Seattle. That afternoon we took their two children to the Seattle Children’s Museum, located at 305 Harrison Street. There, after taking part in a drumming workshop where the kids played a variety of drums from around the world, we visited the Kenneth and Marleen Alhadeff Exhibit Center which houses a multiplicity of hands-on exhibits featuring the celebrations and lifestyles of children living in Ghana, Japan, China, and the Philippines. The museum also contains an aquarium, theater, and super-sized playground. My favorite part of the museum, of course, was the Time Trek exhibit, where we learned about families living in ancient China, as well as in ancient Mayan and Greek civilizations. In ancient Greece, we chose a jury and learned about early forms of democracy. My friends rode in a chariot similar to those used by the Shang Dynasty, and we all created a Mayan meal. We had a blast, and were completely exhausted by the time we left. Any of you living in the Seattle area, or visiting Seattle soon should definitely visit this museum.

A Sunday morning flight back to Atlanta did not allow me to visit the second panel on childhood at the AHA. I did contact the presenters of this panel for information about their papers, and they all very kindly supplied me with a brief synopsis of their presentations. “Generations in Play: Childhood in Twentieth-Century American Culture,” featured a wide variety of papers that addressed the complex negotiations taking place between children, as well as children and adults. In her paper entitled “Boyish Fathers and Manly Sons: Masculinity, Maturity, and Father-Son Relationships in the American Middle Class, 1900 and 1929,” Caroline Hinkle McCamant argued that new ideas of fatherhood emerged during her period of study, ideas which emphasized the importance of fathers not only maintaining a more youthful outlook when it came to their sons, but also fostering greater paternal involvement in the development of father-son relationships. Gary Cross followed with his paper, “Childhood in the Creation of Playful Crowds.” In it, Cross described how the insertion of children into the pleasure crowds of amusement and theme parks in both Britain and the United States in the 20th century helped to transform the “dangerous” into “playful,” which furthered the creation of a distinct middle-class culture in the midst of such consumerism. Leslie Paris’ paper entitled “A Careful Balance: American Girls’ Gymnastics and Gender Socialization in the 1970s” examined the complexities of gender contestation and the girls’ gymnastics culture of the 70s, arguing that the sport allowed Americans to merge conventional and new gender ideologies. Ruth M. Alexander acted as Chair as well as Commentator.

That afternoon, as I was watching the in-flight movie, I missed two more papers on childhood. During a joint session with the Conference on Latin American History, Erica M. Winder presented “Child Emperor, Children of the Empire: Putting Age in the Analysis of Nineteenth Century Brazil” as part of a panel called “New Perspectives on State and Society in the Brazilian Empire, 1822-89” chaired by John Charles Chasteen. At the same time Ms. Winder was giving her paper, Michelle LeMaster presented a paper entitled “’A Fort for the Protection of your Women and Children:’ Gendered Rhetoric, Masculinity, and the Building of the Cherokee Forts” that sounded interesting. This paper was part of a panel called “Gender in the (Re)Making of Cherokee History, chaired by Tom Hatley.

Looking back at this year’s AHA experience, I am almost certain that there were other papers related to the history of childhood that were presented this year. Worth mentioning are Tristran Landry’s paper entitled “The Folklorist and the Archives: The Adaptation of Oral Sources and the Making of a Civilizing Children’s Literature in the Nineteenth Century,” Donna Alvah’s “Local Views of American Military Families at Overseas Bases in the Early Cold War Era,” and Ryan Anderson’s “Gilbert Patten: Mediator in the Creation of the ‘All American Boy.’ Unfortunately, my schedule did not allow me to attend their panels, and they were unavailable for comment.

If you would like more information about the papers presented at this year’s AHA Annual meeting, please visit the American Historical Association’s website at http://www.historians.org/annual. There, you will find an online version of the 2005 program, online versions of past programs dating as far back as 2002, and information about next year’s annual meeting to be held in Philadelphia. For those of you interested in future Annual Meetings, the website also lists the venues and dates of the next eight conferences.

Before closing this article, I feel that I should say something about the 120th Annual Meeting in Philadelphia, which will be held January 5-8, 2006. While next year’s theme is “Nations, Nationalism, and National Histories,” the AHA welcomes papers and sessions on all topics, regardless of their relationship to next year’s theme. The Call for Papers is still open, and I urge all of you to present something. The deadline for proposals is February 15, 2005. This year, the AHA is trying something different. Not only are they requiring the online submission of proposals at the website mentioned above, but they are encouraging poster presentations, thematic workshops, roundtable discussions, and other experimental formats.

For more information about these new formats of presentation, see Roy Rosenzweig’s article “Should the AHA Annual Meeting Be Changed?,” which appeared in the September 2004 issue of Perspectives. This article can also be found online at the following address: http://www.historians.org/perspectives/issues/2004/0409/. Hope to see you there!