Call for Chapters: Unsettled childhoods in southern spaces (edited collection) Felicity Jensz (University of Münster, Germany) and Rebecca Swartz (University of the Free State, South Africa)

 

We are looking for a number of chapters of 7,000 words to expand our basis of an edited collection which examines the meaning of ‘settled’ and ‘unsettled’ childhoods in the southern hemisphere locations of the British Empire that became South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand from European ‘settlement’ to the present day. We are interested in the meaning of childhood in (settler) colonial contexts and these chapters show that a focus on children’s experiences can unsettle common understandings of settler colonialism. Children are unsettled and unsettling as they are not as ‘fixed’ as adults in their identities, and, are deemed still ‘malleable’. Their position in colonial society is also contingent on projected trajectories of settlement, with mixed race as well as children outside of the categories of white or indigenous also complicating as well as testing and straining the concepts of child, childhood and settler colonial societies. The bodies of children were projections of normative expectations of a ‘healthy’ settler colonial site, with bodies that deviated from the norm, either through illness or genetics, having the potential to unsettle both projected as well as lived realities within settler colonies.

Through a focus on children and childhood(s) in settler colonial contexts we are contributing to the academic discussion as to the meaning of what it meant to be a child in the past and how childhood was used in the construction of new political entities. Similar to contemporary contexts, childhood is inherently unsettled, as it is a phase of dynamic physical, emotional and mental change, prior to a more settled, adult phase. The collection, therefore, seeks to unsettle the idea of childhood itself, showing that understandings of what it meant to be a young person in the past varied significantly across the southern spaces under study. The edited collection stems from our work on childhood and institutions in settler colonial spaces across empires, see: Settler Colonial Studies vol 13 2023. 

The papers presented in this edited collection will present original research that engages with the following themes:

1. Migrant childhoods: What were the experiences of migrant children entering settler colonial spaces? How does including migrant children in our analysis shift understandings of children and childhood? How do these literally ‘unsettled’ children enter into colonial spaces and change the dynamics between coloniser and colonised and challenge the categories associated with childhood itself?
2. Indigenous childhoods: How did colonial regimes in these southern spaces impact on understandings of childhood and in particular on indigenous children themselves? How were these children brought into relationship with institutions in those contexts?
3. Settler childhoods: What did it mean to grow up as a settler child? How does studying white settler children in colonial contexts help us to understand the settler colonial context more broadly?
4. Institutions: How were and are childhoods - migrant, settler, indigenous - shaped by institutions in (settler) colonial contexts? What is the role of these institutions in shaping children’s lives, experiences and futures?
5. Sources of childhood: What kinds of sources can we use to understand the experiences and agency of children in the past, particularly in these southern locations? Papers in this collection illustrate the utility of a vast range of sources, including personal documents and writings, autobiography, anthropological field notes, oral history interviews, archival research, amongst others. How do we access children’s voices?

We are particularly looking for papers that examine the experiences of Maori children, mixed-race children, children of various socio-economic backgrounds, Indian children in South Africa, and migrant children in general.

Timeline:

By 1 March 2024: 300 word abstracts and one-page bios to be submitted to both Felicity Jensz (felicity.jensz@uni-muenster.de) and Rebecca Swartz (swartzr@ufs.ac.za)

15 March 2024: Invitations to submit a full manuscript will be sent

30 June 2024: Full papers due

Please note the tight turn around time as we are already advanced with the project.

Contact Information

Felicity Jensz (felicity.jensz@uni-muenster.de) and Rebecca Swartz (swartzr@ufs.ac.za)