Children
Short Teaching Module: Roman Children’s Sarcophagi
I use images of two Roman marble sarcophagi for topics on children and childhood in undergraduate courses on ancient society, family, gender, representations, and historiography. The sarcophagi can be used to study one period of antiquity or to examine changing notions of childhood over time.
Short Teaching Module: Chinese Propaganda Posters
Visual images provide valuable material for the exploration of childhood, youth and history.
Short Teaching Module: Children, Culture, and Folktales
For this particular lesson we examined two classic tales that while similar in many respects, highlight regional cultural differences especially in regard to childhood ideals.
Short Teaching Module: Play in Tokugawa Japan
At the beginning of a lecture on the daily life of townsmen in Edo (Tokyo), I first presented an image of Tokugawa-period (1600–1868) Japanese children. This detail from an ink painting by Hanabusa Itchô (1562–1724) shows a childhood experience common to both sexes: watching a puppet show.
Short Teaching Module: Childhood and Transatlantic Slavery
Especially useful in helping to place slavery in a world history perspective is one of the first slave narratives, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano or Gustavus Vassa the African, originally published in 1772.
Writers of the Heian Era: Diary, Sei Shônagon 3
Sei Shônagon, a lady-in-waiting to Empress Teishi (or Sadako), left a journal of anecdotes, impressions, and commentary called The Pillowbook (covering the years 986-1000 CE) that has become a valuable source for the court society and cultural life of the Heian Period.
Divorce in the Soviet Union
One of Mikhail Gorbachev's most famous reform movements was 'glasnost' (openness), which allowed partial freedom of the press to address social problems and corruption within the Soviet Union.
Cultural Contact in Southern Africa: Law, Slave Women and Children
Although marriage was not forbidden between Europeans and slaves or other non-Europeans, it was quite rare and entailed a drop in social status for the European. Nevertheless, sexual relationships occurred—sometimes coerced, sometimes by mutual agreement.
Women and Stalinism: Newspaper, Women’s Education
This article reflects a more complex example of state-controlled media. It is more negative in tone, by providing examples of problems in daily life, including shortages of housing and food, unequal treatment at work, and lack of services for families.
Jean–Jacques Rousseau, Emile (1762)
Rousseau was the most controversial and paradoxical of the writers of the Enlightenment. Born in Switzerland, he published important works on politics, music, and in Emile, education. He also wrote one of the most widely read novels of the century, Julie or the New Heloise.