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This edited collection contends that the figure of the child is foundational to the workings of biopolitical power yet remains undertheorized. The collection is organized into three sections that illustrate how these qualities enable the sorting of human beings into populations targeted for reform, exploitation, and disposal.
List of contents
List of Figures Notes on Contributors
Preface: Unmanageable Bodies: Where Childhood Studies and Biopolitics Meet
Sarah Chinn
Introduction: The Biopolitics of Childhood Lucia Hodgson and Allison Giffen
Section I: Heredity1. Jacob Riis, Luther Burbank, and the Training of the American Child
Christa Holm Vogelius
2. "Send the Little Patient to the Hospital at Once:" Early Eugenics at North Carolina State Hospital's Epileptic Colony
Elisabeth McClanahan Harris
3. The Biopolitics of Sexual Consent in Lydia Maria Child's Reform Fiction
Lucia Hodgson
4. "Relics of a Race Never Yet Seen": Archaeologies of Nineteenth-Century Child Bodies
Laura Soderberg
Section II: Death5. Innocent Specimens: Depicting Enslaved Childhood through the
Lusus NaturaeRebecca M. Rosen
6. Arrested Development: Disability and the "Feebleminded" Black Boy in
St. Nicholas: Scribner's Illustrated Magazine for Girls and BoysAllison Giffen
7. Newsboy Necropolitics: John Ellard, Disability, and Black Absence
Manuel Herrero-Puertas
8. "The Blight-Sooner or Later-Strikes All": Childhood and the Biopolitics of Racialized Lynching
Maude Hines
Section III: Family9. Queer Ontologies: Categories of Age before Developmentalism
Gabrielle Owen
10. Biopolitics and Youth Border-Crossing in Sui Sin Far (Edith Maud Eaton) and Charles Eastman (Ohiyesa): Children's Bodies as Sites of Contention Between White State Power and Families of Color
Sarah Ruffing Robbins
11. Twilight Talk: What Every Girl Ought to Know about Sex Education in Louisa May Alcott's
Eight CousinsStephanie Peebles Tavera
12. The Sentimental Biopolitics of Louisa May Alcott's
Little WomenKristin Proehl
About the author
Lucia Hodgson is Researcher in the Swedish Institute for North American Studies (SINAS) and the Department of English at Uppsala University in Sweden. She is the author of
Raised in Captivity: Why Does America Fail Its Children? She has published widely on nineteenth-century childhood, including in
Early American Literature,
Studies in American Fiction,
Journal of Juvenilia Studies, and
The Children's Table: Childhood Studies and the New Humanities. She is currently at work on the book project
Taking Liberties: Slavery and the American Seduction Narrative. She is co-founder and co-editor of
Critical Childhood Studies: A Long 19C Digital Humanities Project.
Allison Giffen is a Professor in the Department of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and Affiliated Faculty in the English Department and the Institute for Critical Disability Studies at Western Washington University where she specializes in nineteenth-century US literature and culture with an emphasis in disability, race, and childhood. She has published in such academic journals as
Children's Literature Association Quarterly,
Legacy,
Women's Studies, and
ATQ and recently co-edited
Saving the World: Girlhood and Evangelicalism in Nineteenth-Century Literature. She is co-founder and co-editor of
Critical Childhood Studies: A Long 19C Digital Humanities Project.
Summary
This edited collection contends that the figure of the child is foundational to the workings of biopolitical power yet remains undertheorized. The collection is organized into three sections that illustrate how these qualities enable the sorting of human beings into populations targeted for reform, exploitation, and disposal.
