Ruhr University Bochum, Germany; Sandra Maß, Lehrstuhl für Transnationale Geschichte des 19. Jahrhunderts

Time: 03.-05.09.2020
Venue: Bochum
Proposals by: 20.12.2019

The history of the family and childhood has expanded considerably in the context of global, transnational and imperial perspectives in historical studies. Historiography has long emphasized the regional diversity of family models and quickly abandoned the notion that the development of the modern family was teleologically directed towards a nuclear family (Kernfamilie). The same differentiation applies to research on the history of childhood. It has underlined the synchronic and diachronic differences in the concept of childhood from its very beginning.

The extension of this critical differentiation to imperial and global spaces, however, has only recently begun to shape historiography. The results point to different models of extended families in the modern age, thereby relating friends, stuff, parents-in-law, adoptive and biological parents and even surrogate mothers with each other on a global level. At the same time, an unproductive separation of the historiographies of childhood and family can still be observed.

The conference will discuss these developments and develop new perspectives on transnational histories of family and childhood.

Furthermore, it aims to bring young researchers into dialogue with established experts in the field. General questions like, how were families constructed on a global scale, or, how did children live global lives in history, shall be directed at more specific fields of research, such as: … read more and source (Web).