19th-century childhood studies
A01=Laura Soderberg
African American childhood in literature
alternative narratives of youth
and childhood
antebellum childhood narratives
antebellum legal views of children
Author_Laura Soderberg
Category=DSB
Category=DSRC
Category=JBF
Category=JBSP1
Category=JHBK
Category=NHK
childhood and citizenship in antebellum America
childhood and poverty in 19th century
childhood and reproduction
childhood and social exclusion
childhood and social hi
childhood and societal perception
childhood as cultural construct
childhood in periodical fiction
children as social threat
children in pre-Civil War America
counterhistory of childhood
cultural history of childhood
cultural imagination of childhood
early American juvenile justice
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
exclusion of children from adulthood
Harriet Beecher Stowe and childhood
Harriet Wilson literary studies
Herman Melville and child characters
historical child advocacy
historical perspectives on antisocial youth
historical perspectives on child welfare
history of juvenile delinquency
innocence and vulnerability in 19th-century literature
juvenile punishment in history
legal treatment of children
literary childhood in America
literary history of child resistance
literary recovery of marginalized children
marginalized children in literature
marginalized youth in historical texts
medical journals and childhood studies
medicalization of childhood
race
race and childhood in 19th century
racialized childhood narratives
reproduction
resistance in literary childhood
sentimental politics and children
Susan Paul and youth narratives
William Apess and childhood
Product details
- ISBN 9781625345882
- Weight: 335g
- Dimensions: 147 x 220mm
- Publication Date: 30 Jul 2021
- Publisher: University of Massachusetts Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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Childhood as scholars often recognize it-innocent, vulnerable, and above all, precious-is anchored in the cultural imagination of the early nineteenth-century United States, when an attitude of child worship drove sentimental politics and literature. But, not all childhoods were defined by love, education, and nurture. Singled out by nineteenth-century legal and medical establishments, children already marginalized by slavery, ethnicity, and poverty were increasingly branded as ""incorrigible,"" delinquent, and antisocial. Vicious Infants offers a counterhistory of literary childhood as both perceived social threat and site of resistance, revealing that many children were not only cut off from family and society, they were also preemptively excluded from the rewards of citizenship and adulthood. Turning to prison documents, medical journals, overlooked periodical fiction, and literary works from William Apess, Harriet Wilson, Herman Melville, Susan Paul, and Harriet Beecher Stowe, Laura Soderberg recovers alternate narratives of childhood and provides an important window into the cultural links between race, reproduction, and childhood in the antebellum period.
Laura Soderberg is assistant professor of English at University of Southern Indiana.
