Sephardic Jews in America
A Diasporic History
Aviva Ben-Ur
Offers refreshing new insights into the Sephardic migration from Ottoman lands to America in the early twentieth century. Drawing heavily upon the unknown riches of the Judeo-Spanish (Ladino) press, Ben-Ur illuminates many unknown aspects of the Jewish immigrant experience. She sheds new light on American Jewry, providing a different narrative that will be especially welcome to students of ethnicity and immigration in general as well as readers seeking information on the Hispanic-Jewish encounter.
—Jane S. Gerber, Director of the Institute for Sephardic Studies, City University of New York
A small band of Sephardim, or Jews who trace their origins to Spain and Portugal, were the first Jews to arrive in the New World. By the 1720s, these Western Sephardim were outnumbered by Ashkenazim (Jews of Germanic and Eastern European background), though they maintained religious hegemony until the turn of the nineteenth century.
A far larger group of Sephardic Jews, Iberian in remote origin, immigrated to the U.S. from Turkey, Greece, and the Balkans toward the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth. Most of these Eastern Sephardim settled in New York, establishing the most important Judeo-Spanish community outside the former Ottoman Empire. A smaller group of Mizrahi Jews from Arab-speaking lands arrived at the same time. A minority within a minority and often differing in their culture and rituals, both Sephardim and Mizrahim were not readily recognized as Jews by their Ashkenazic coreligionists. At the same time, they forged alliances with the Hispanic and Arab non-Jewish immigrant communities with whom they shared significant cultural and linguistic ties.
The denial of their Jewishness was a defining experience for Sephardi and Mizrahi immigrants and, in some cases, for their native-born children and grandchildren as well. The failure to recognize Sephardim as fellow Jews continues today in textbooks, articles, documentaries, films, and popular awareness. More often than not, Sephardic Jews are simply absent from any sort of portrayal of the American Jewish community.
Drawing on primary source documents such as the Ladino (Judeo-Spanish) press, archival documents, and oral histories, Sephardic Jews in America offers the first book-length academic treatment of their history in the United States, from 1654 to the present, focusing on the age of mass immigration. It will appeal to all those interested in the history of the Jews in America, U.S. immigration, ethnicity, Hispanic and Arab American studies, and sociology.
Aviva Ben-Ur is Associate Professor of Judaic and Near Eastern Studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where she also serves as Adjunct Associate Professor in the departments of History and Spanish and Portuguese. She is the author of A Ladino Legacy: The Judeo-Spanish Collection of Louis N. Levy.
$35.00ISBN 0814799825
336 pages, 8
Cloth Release Date: 2009/2/1
Children and Youth in a New Nation
Edited by James Marten
Children and Youth in a New Nation is a rich and welcomed introduction to the many faces of childhood in America from the Revolution to the eve of the Civil War. The history of childhood is often treated as a marginal topic, disconnected from major historical themes. This volume seeks to correct that misperception by demonstrating that the growth of the republic and the emergence of new ideas about childhood and the shifting experience of actual children were inextricably linked.
—Steven Mintz, Columbia University, and author of Hucks Raft: A History of American Childhood
In the early years of the Republic, as Americans tried to determine what it meant to be an American, they also wondered what it meant to be an American child. A defensive, even fearful, approach to childhood gave way to a more optimistic campaign to integrate young Americans into the Republican experiment.
In Children and Youth in a New Nation, historians unearth the experiences of and attitudes about children and youth during the decades following the American Revolution. Beginning with the revolution itself, the contributors explore a broad range of topics, from the ways in which American children and youth participated in and learned from the revolt and its aftermaths, to developing notions of ideal childhoods as they were imagined by new religious denominations and competing ethnic groups, to the struggle by educators over how the society that came out of the Revolution could best be served by its educational systems. The volume concludes by foreshadowing future child-saving efforts by reformers committed to constructing adequate systems of public health and child welfare institutions.
Rooted in the historical literature and primary sources, Children and Youth in a New Nation is a key resource in our understanding of origins of modern ideas about children and youth and the conflation of national purpose and ideas related to child development.
James Marten is professor and chair of the history department at Marquette University. His books include The Children's Civil War as well as the edited anthologies, Children in Colonial America and Children and War: A Historical Anthology, both published by NYU Press.
$70.00
ISBN 0814757421
320 pages, 10
Cloth
Release Date: 2009/1/1
ISBN 0814757499
320 pages, 10
Paperback
Release Date: 2009/1/1
White Cargo
The Forgotten History of Britains White Slaves in America
Don Jordan and Michael Walsh
"This vividly written book tells the tale from both sides of the Atlantic…meticulously source and footnoted—but is never dry or academic...Jordan and Walsh offer an explanation of how the structures of slavery—black or white—were entwined in the roots of American society. They refrain from drawing links to today, except to remind readers that there are probably tens of millions of Americans who are descended from white slaves without even knowing it."
—New York Times Book Review
"High school American history classes present indentured servitude as a benignly paternalistic system whereby colonial immigrants spent a few years working off their passage and went on to better things. Not so, this impassioned history argues: the indentured servitude of whites was comparable in most respects to the slavery endured by blacks. Given the hideous mortality rates, the authors argue, indentured contracts often amounted to a life sentence at hard laborsome convicts asked to be hanged rather than be sent to Virginia....their expos of unfree labor in the British colonies paints an arresting portrait of early America as gulag. 8 pages of photos."
—Publishers Weekly
With information gleaned from contemporary letters, journals and court archives, White Cargo is packed with proof that the brutalities usually associated with black slavery were, for centuries, also inflicted on whites.
—Daily Mail
An eye-opening and heart-rending story.
—The Times (London)
White Cargo is the forgotten story of the thousands of Britons who lived and died in bondage in Britains American colonies.
In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, more than 300,000 white people were shipped to America as slaves. Urchins were swept up from Londons streets to labor in the tobacco fields, where life expectancy was no more than two years. Brothels were raided to provide breeders for Virginia. Hopeful migrants were duped into signing as indentured servants, unaware they would become personal property who could be bought, sold, and even gambled away. Transported convicts were paraded for sale like livestock.
Drawing on letters crying for help, diaries, and court and government archives, Don Jordan and Michael Walsh demonstrate that the brutalities usually associated with black slavery alone were perpetrated on whites throughout British rule. The trade ended with American independence, but the British still tried to sell convicts in their former colonies, which prompted one of the most audacious plots in Anglo-American history.
This is a saga of exploration and cruelty spanning 170 years that has been submerged under the overwhelming memory of black slavery. White Cargo brings the brutal, uncomfortable story to the surface.
Don Jordan is an award-winning television director and writer who has worked on dozens of documentaries and dramas. He lives in London.
Michael Walsh spent twelve years as a reporter and presenter on World in Action and has won several awards for his work. He is now a producer and writer living in London, specializing in political and historical documentaries.$18.95
ISBN 0814742963
320 pages, 16
Paperback Release Date: 2008/3/8
Freedoms Prophet
Bishop Richard Allen, the AME Church, and the Black Founding Fathers
Richard S. Newman
"In this elegant and insightful biography, historian Newman (The Transformation of American Abolitionism) offers a vivid portrait of Bishop Richard Allen...Newman's beautifully written study is not only a first-rate social history of the early Republic and African-American culture and religion, it provides a detailed sketch of Allen that is sure to become the definitive biography of the leader."
—Publishers Weekly Starred Review
"Newman offers an incredibly detailed and astute look at Allen both in the context of religion and in the broader context of American History and philosophy on equality...Newman portrays a man driven by a moral and philosophical impulse for racial justice, evolving as he faced personal, religious, and leadership challenges, as well as the broader national challenge of living up to a creed of equality at a time when the Founding Fathers fell short of those ideals."
—Booklist Starred Review
"Newman’s lively, lilting biography of Richard Allen is the keen-eyed appraisal of a remarkable founding father that we needed, wanted, and can now cherish. Save a special place on your bookshelf for this exploration of a man who extricated himself from slavery and rose to accomplish what few white Americans of his generation could match. "
—Gary B. Nash, author of The Forgotten Fifth: African Americans in the Age of Revolution
"Through exhaustive research and graceful writing, Newman shows us all the sides of this genuine black founding father: activist, institution-builder of the AME church, theologian and writer, pulpit politician, American-made genius from the street and the study. This book is at once a wonderful breath of fresh air into founder mania, as well as the new standard in our eternal quest to define the black leader. "
—David W. Blight, author of A Slave No More: Two Men who Escaped to Freedom
Freedom’s Prophet is a long-overdue biography of Richard Allen, founder of the first major African-American church and the leading black activist of the early American republic. A tireless minister, abolitionist, and reformer, Allen inaugurated some of the most important institutions in African-American history and influenced nearly every black leader of the nineteenth century, from Douglass to Dubois.
Allen (17601831) was born a slave in colonial Philadelphia, secured his freedom during the American Revolution, and became one of the nations leading black activists before the Civil War. Among his many achievements, Allen helped form the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church, co-authored the first copyrighted pamphlet by an African American writer, published the first African American eulogy of George Washington, and convened the first national convention of black reformers. In a time when most black men and women were categorized as slave property, Allen was championed as a black hero. As Richard S. Newman writes, Allen must be considered one of Americas Black Founding Fathers.
In this thoroughly engaging and beautifully written book, Newman describes Allen’s continually evolving life and thought, setting both in the context of his times. From Allen's early antislavery struggles and belief in interracial harmony to his later reflections on black democracy and black emigration, Newman traces Allen's impact on American reform and reformers, on racial attitudes during the years of the Early Republic, and on the black struggle for justice in the age of Adams, Jefferson, Madison and Washington. Whether serving as Americas first Black bishop, challenging slaveholding statesmen in a nation devoted to liberty, or visiting the Presidents House (the first black activist to do so), this important book makes it clear that Allen belongs in the pantheon of Americas great founding figures. Freedom’s Prophet reintroduces Allen to todays readers and restores him to his rightful place in our nations history.
Richard Newman is Associate Professor of History at Rochester Institute of Technology in Rochester, New York. He is the author of The Transformation of American Abolitionism: Fighting Slavery in the Early Republic and co-editor of the series, Race in the Atlantic World, 1700-1900.
$34.95
ISBN 0814758266
368 pages
Cloth
The Trial of Frederick Eberle
Language, Patriotism and Citizenship in Philadelphia’s German Community, 1790 to 1830
Friederike Baer
This is microhistory at its best. Baer has selected a single event and brilliantly used it to explore the larger culture and society of the time. With great clarity and insight Baer has investigated multicultural issues of language and the assimilation of immigrants that are as relevant for us today as they were to Americans two centuries ago. This is a very important and timely book.
—Gordon S. Wood, Brown University
In the summer of 1816, the state of Pennsylvania tried fifty-nine German-Americans on charges of conspiracy and rioting. The accused had, according to the indictment, conspired to prevent with physical force the introduction of the English language into the largest German church in North America, Philadelphias Lutheran congregation of St. Michaels and Zion. The trial marked the climax of an increasingly violent conflict over language choice in Philadelphias German community, with members bitterly divided into those who favored the exclusive use of German in their church, and those who preferred occasional services in English. At trial, witnesses, lawyers, defendants, and the judge explicitly linked language to class, citizenship, patriotism, religion, and violence.
Mining many previously unexamined sources, including German-language writings, witness testimonies, and the opinions of prominent legal professionals, Friederike Baer uses legal conflict as a prism through which to explore the significance of language in the early American republic. The Trial of Frederick Eberle reminds us that debates over language have always been about far more than just language. Baer demonstrates that the 1816 trial was not a battle between Americans and immigrants, or German-speakers and English-speakers. Instead, the individuals involved in the case seized and exploited English and German as powerful symbols of competing cultural, economic, and social interests.
Friederike Baer teaches American Studies at Temple University.
$48.00ISBN 0814799809
288 pages, 9
Cloth
Release Date: 2008/5/10
Long Before Stonewall
Histories of Same-Sex Sexuality in Early America
Edited by Thomas A. Foster
Thoughtful, persuasive, solidly constructed, and likely to endure the test of time.—Choice
Half the 14 essays in this interdisciplinary study of seventeenth- through nineteenth-century America are reprints—though it's useful to have work that appeared in academic journals collected in one place. Among original work, Ramon A. Gutierrez's revisionist perspective on Native American berdache will raise the most eyebrows: rather than exalt their same-sex spirituality, fashionable among gay liberationists and radical faeries alike, the author's theory is that they led lives of sexual humiliation and endless work, not of celebration and veneration. Among the reprints, Caleb Crain's account of a romantic triangle among three Philadelphia men that began in 1786, culled from their diaries, is the sweetest. Several essays draw on court records dating back as far as three hundred years to unearth queer lives, while others glean an intriguing and instructive glimpse of the past through a reading of Colonial-era fiction and journalism.
—Q Syndicate
Illuminate[s] the complexity, breadth, and social impact of sexuality in history.—The Gay & Lesbian Review
An excellent introduction to the dynamic new work on sexuality in colonial and early national America, which not only expands our understanding of early America but forces us to rethink paradigms and periodizations that have long governed histories of sexuality in the U.S. A valuable contribution.
—George Chauncey, author of Why Marriage?
This splendid collection illustrates the maturation of lesbian and gay history. The early American era emerges as a rich period for understanding same-sex desire in both law and culture. It also proves critical for re-evaluating the dominant interpretations of the emergence of modern homosexual identities.
—Estelle B. Freedman, author of Feminism, Sexuality, and Politics
This book fills a huge gap in research on same-sex sexuality, and usefully complicates our historical understanding of acts and identities. Long before Stonewall there were sexual identities! But their character will surprise you.
—Jonathan Ned Katz, author of Love Stories
Represents an important contribution to American historical and sexuality studies.—The Gay & Lesbian Review/Worldwide
"A major, ground-breaking study of early America. Readers will come away with a fresh sense of the centrality of sexuality to any understanding of the formation of the new Republic."
—Martha Vicinus, author of Intimate Friends: Women Who Loved Women, 1778-1928
"This splendid collection, interdisciplinary but deeply historical, illustrates the maturation of lesbian and gay history as it has expanded its chronological and regional scope and its methodological depths.."
—Estelle B. Freedman, author of Feminism, Sexuality, and Politics
Although the 1969 Stonewall riots in New York City symbolically mark the start of the gay rights movement, individuals came together long before the modern era to express their same-sex romantic and sexual attraction toward one another, and in a myriad of ways. Some reflected on their desires in quiet solitude, while others endured verbal, physical, and legal harassment for publicly expressing homosexual interest through words or actions.
Long Before Stonewall seeks to uncover the many iterations of same-sex desire in colonial America and the early Republic, as well as to expand the scope of how we define and recognize homosocial behavior. Thomas A. Foster has assembled a path-breaking, interdisciplinary collection of original and classic essays that explore topics ranging from homoerotic imagery of black men to prison reform to the development of sexual orientations. This collection spans a regional and temporal breadth that stretches from the colonial Southwest to Quaker communities in New England. It also includes a challenge to commonly accepted understandings of the Native American berdache. Throughout, connections of race, class, status, and gender are emphasized, exposing the deep foundations on which modern sexual political movements and identities are built.
Thomas A. Foster is assistant professor of history at DePaul University, in Chicago, and author of Sex and the Eighteenth-Century Man: Massachusetts and the History of Sexuality in America.
$75.00
ISBN 0814727492
448 pages
Cloth
Release Date: 7/1/2007
ISBN 0814727506
448 pages
Paperback
The Contrast
Manners, Morals, and Authority in the Early American Republic
Cynthia A. Kierner
"This powerful and lively package of primary materials and historical context will demonstrate how historical 'forces' play themselves out on the ground. Kierner’s collection offers a fresh lens on a new world struggling into being and will inspire teachers and students of all ages alike."
—Catherine Allgor, author of A Perfect Union: Dolley Madison and the Creation of the American Nation
"The Contrast makes a real contribution to the existing scholarship on this period, it has great appeal for classroom use, and it puts back in print an amusing play that is instrumental in understanding critical issues in the new nation. The play The Contrast centers on gender roles, relations, and expectations, mocking the gender stereotypes of the day and is a rich source for understanding a host of political and social issues in the Early Republic. It is funnyeven to a modern audienceand replete with literary references."
—Charlene M. Boyer Lewis, author of Ladies and Gentlemen on Display: Planter Society at the Virginia Springs, 1790-1860
"I can think of no other text of the period that lays out the drive toward transparency more clearly or denigrates coquettes and libertines more entertainingly. The play is a pivotal piece of American cultural history. " —Norma Basch, author of Framing American Divorce: From the Revolutionary Generation to the Victorians
"Kierner’s new edition of this play should win it a much wider modern audience. Kierner highlights the many historical themes of the play with a fine introduction and facilitates deeper understanding of those issues with a wonderfully chosen set of additional primary documents. The resulting book could be used with profit in any early American history course."
—The North Carolina Historical Review
"The Contrast", which premiered at New York City's John Street Theater in 1787, was the first American play performed in public by a professional theater company. The play, written by New England-born, Harvard-educated, Royall Tyler was timely, funny, and extremely popular. When the play appeared in print in 1790, George Washington himself appeared at the head of its list of hundreds of subscribers.
Reprinted here with annotated footnotes by historian Cynthia A. Kierner, Tyler's play explores the debate over manners, morals, and cultural authority in the decades following American Revolution. Did the American colonists' rejection of monarchy in 1776 mean they should abolish all European social traditions and hierarchies? What sorts of etiquette, amusements, and fashions were appropriate and beneficial? Most important, to be a nation, did Americans need to distinguish themselves from Europeans—and, if so, how?
Tyler was not the only American pondering these questions, and Kierner situates the play in its broader historical and cultural contexts. An extensive introduction provides readers with a background on life and politics in the United States in 1787, when Americans were in the midst of nation-building. The book also features a section with selections from contemporary letters, essays, novels, conduct books, and public documents, which debate issues of the era.
Cynthia A. Kierner is professor of History at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. She is the author of Scandal at Bizarre: Rumor and Reputation in Jefferson's America and Revolutionary America: Sources and Interpretation.
$17.00ISBN 0814747930
180 pages
Paperback
Release Date: 4/1/2007
$55.00
ISBN 0814747922
180 pages, 13
Cloth
That Ever Loyal Island
Staten Island and the American Revolution
Phillip Papas
"A beautifully written, richly descriptive, and thoroughly-researched account of the importance of Staten Island in the American Revolution. This is an important book, demonstrating that a close examination and analysis of local politics, economics, and social structure can hold the key to understanding national history."
—Carol Berkin, author of Revolutionary Mothers
Is not only a micro-history, it provides lessons in the winning—and keeping—the hearts and minds of a local civilian population.—On Point
An excellent booksuccinct yet deeply researched, well written and filled with telling bits of evidence worked smoothly into an interpretive narrative. An insightful, important study.
—Robert Calhoon, author of The Loyalists in Revolutionary America, 1760-1781
Of crucial strategic importance to both the British and the Continental Army, Staten Island was, for a good part of the American Revolution, a bastion of Loyalist support. With its military and political significance, Staten Island provides rich terrain for Phillip Papas's illuminating case study of the local dimensions of the Revolutionary War.
Papas traces Staten Island's political sympathies not to strong ties with Britain, but instead to local conditions that favored the status quo instead of revolutionary change. With a thriving agricultural economy, stable political structure, and strong allegiance to the Anglican Church, on the eve of war it was in Staten Island's self-interest to throw its support behind the British, in order to maintain its favorable economic, social, and political climate.
Over the course of the conflict, continual occupation and attack by invading armies deeply eroded Staten Island's natural and other resources, and these pressures, combined with general war weariness, created fissures among the residents of "that ever loyal island," with Loyalist neighbors fighting against Patriot neighbors in a civil war. Papas's thoughtful study reminds us that the Revolution was both a civil war and a war for independence - a duality that is best viewed from a local perspective.
Phillip Papas is Assistant Professor of History at Union County College in Cranford, New Jersey and is a native of Staten Island.
$45.00ISBN 0814767249
192 pages
Cloth
Release Date: 5/1/2007
The Many Faces of Alexander Hamilton
The Life and Legacy of America's Most Elusive Founding Father
Edited by Douglas Ambrose and Robert W. T. Martin
Scholars whose interests include the political, diplomatic, and economics aspects of the early republic will find these works rewarding additions to their reading.
—Journal of the Early Republic
This book. . . achiev[es] a badly needed analysis of Hamiltons impact on his and later times.
—The Historian
"Talleyrand, who was acquainted with all of the statesmen of Europe, once remarked that he had never encountered anyone 'equal to Alexander Hamilton.' Hamilton may, in fact, have been the greatest of the American Founding Fathers. He was certainly one of the most important. Despite this, he has rarely been given his due. This superb collection of essays goes a considerable distance towards redressing the balance and towards restoring an American statesman to the central place that he occupied in his own time."
—Paul A. Rahe, author of Republics Ancient and Modern: Classical Republicanism and the American Revolution
"Here are many fresh thoughts by many of the most innovative scholars at work on Alexander Hamilton today. Every student of the new republic and many general readers who are captivated by the subject will want to read this volume."
—Lance Banning, author of Conceived in Liberty: The Struggle to Define the New Republic, 1789-1793
"This supberb collection of essays goes a considerable distance towards redressing the balance and towards restoring an American statesman to the central place that he occupied in his own time."
—Paul A. Rahe, author of Republics Ancient and Modern: Classical Republicanism and the American Revolution
Revolutionary War officer, co-author of the Federalist Papers, our first Treasury Secretary, Thomas Jefferson's nemesis, and victim of a fatal duel with Aaron Burr: Alexander Hamilton has been the focus of debate from his day to ours. On the one hand, Hamilton was the quintessential Founding Father, playing a central role in every key debate and event in the Revolutionary and Early Republic eras. On the other hand, he has received far less popular and scholarly attention than his brethren. Who was he really and what is his legacy?
Scholars have long disagreed. Was Hamilton a closet monarchist or a sincere republican? A victim of partisan politics or one of its most active promoters? A lackey for British interests or a foreign policy mastermind? The Many Faces of Alexander Hamilton addresses these and other perennial questions. Leading Hamilton scholars, both historians and political scientists alike, present fresh evidence and new, sometimes competing, interpretations of the man, his thought, and the legacy he has had on America and the world.
Douglas Ambrose is Sidney Wertimer, Jr. associate professor of history at Hamilton College, in Clinton, New York. He is the author of Henry Hughes and Proslavery Thought in the Old South.
Robert W. T. Martin is associate professor of government at Hamilton College and author of The Free and Open Press (NYU Press, 2001).
ISBN 0814707246
312 pages
Paperback
Release Date: 2007/9/1
320 pages
Cloth
$45.00
Release Date: 4/1/2006
Children in Colonial America
Edited by James Marten, foreword by Philip J. Greven
Marten adds to the growing body of literature on the history of family life with this rich collection of original essays and transcriptions from primary documents. Divided into thematic subdivisions relating to Europeans and Native Americans, issues of family and community, and the process of becoming American, the 12 essays contributed mainly by history academics examine children's lives from the varied cultures found in Colonial North America and contain copious footnotes and a list of suggested further reading. Such topics as parenting practices, health, education, gender roles, and rites of passage are touched on. The small selection of primary documents (excerpts from letters, diaries, and autobiographies) add depth to an already well-written and researched work whose real strength is its juxtaposition of children's lives across a variety of Colonial cultures.
—Library Journal
"Providing fresh historical perspectives on key features of children's lives, this book offers compelling, new materials on childhood in colonial America, and on groups—including Native Americans and Hispanics—too often left out of conventional coverage."
—Peter Stearns, George Mason University
"Children in Colonial America is a highly original contribution to the history of childhood. The collection's unique strength lies in its great range of regions and peoples represented: from Indian children of Mexico to young Africans in Jamaica, from Separatist Pilgrims in the Netherlands and Plymouth to Catholic girls in Germany, Louisiana, and Pennsylvania. Although ideal for the classroom, these essays offer much that will be of interest to seasoned scholars."
—Gloria L. Main, University of Colorado-Boulder
Few books can be all things to all people, but this one is an exception.
—Kenneth J. Blume
A useful and largely impressive anthology on an under-studied topic.
—PhiloBiblos
The Pilgrims and Puritans did not arrive on the shores of New England alone. Nor did African men and women, brought to the Americas as slaves. Though it would be hard to tell from the historical record, European colonists and African slaves had children, as did the indigenous families whom they encountered, and those children's life experiences enrich and complicate our understanding of colonial America.
Through essays, primary documents, and contemporary illustrations, Children in Colonial America examines the unique aspects of childhood in the American colonies between the late sixteenth and late eighteenth centuries. The twelve original essays observe a diverse cross-section of children—from indigenous peoples of the east coast and Mexico to Dutch-born children of the Plymouth colony and African-born offspring of slaves in the Caribbean—and explore themes including parenting and childrearing practices, children's health and education, sibling relations, child abuse, mental health, gender, play, and rites of passage.
Taken together, the essays and documents in Children in Colonial America shed light on the ways in which the process of colonization shaped childhood, and in turn how the experience of children affected life in colonial America.
James Marten is professor and chair of the Department of History at Marquette University. Among his books are The Children's Civil War, Children and War: A Historical Anthology (available from NYU Press), and Childhood and Child Welfare in the Progressive Era: A Brief History with Documents.
Philip J. Greven is professor emeritus at Rutgers University and author of The Protestant Temperament: Patterns of Child-rearing, Religious Experience, and the Self in Early America, among others.
ISBN 0814757154, $70.00
288 pages
Cloth
Children and Youth in America
Release Date: 12/1/2006
288 pages, 6
Paperback
May 13, 2008
Email: nyu.press@nyu.edu Orders: orders.nyu.press@nyu.edu