Description:
Examines German theories and practices of play, parenting, and pedagogy from 1631 to 1912. Explores the role of the domestic sphere and home economies in establishing transatlantic networks that influenced the emergence of gender, class, race, and religious identities for Germans beyond Europe.
Brief description: Patricia Anne Simpson is Professor of German Studies at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and coeditor of the Goethe Yearbook. She is the author of several books, including most recently Reimagining the European Family: Cultures of Immigration.
Review Quotes:
"A valuable intervention in the historiography of German childhood and play. Simpson's argument has tremendous sweep: exploring changes in childhood and parenting over centuries, the role of play in child development, the deployment of racial and imperial images, the circulation of images and toys across the Atlantic, and the decline of German influence on images of childhood in the twentieth century."
--David Hamlin German History