The symposium will be held on the Rutgers–Camden Campus and is FREE and open to the public. Please join us by registering online.
For more information, please contact Lynne Vallone, chair of the Department of Childhood Studies.

Applications accepted for Associate/Full Professor, Childhood Studies

New Reference Book on Childhood Studies

New 2007 Lecture Series in March and April:
Rethinking Childhood: Juveniles and the Justice System

The grant will support RU-CCCS’ Professional Development Pathways Initiative for Early Childhood Education in Camden, as well as the new PK-3 Continuum Project in partnership with the Camden City Board of Education. Both projects are under the leadership of Angela Connor, Senior Program Director and head of the Early Childhood Education Division.

Dr. Dan Cook, associate professor of childhood studies at Rutgers University—Camden, addressed the Disney princess culture and its impact on today’s young girls during Cappuccino Academy at Barnes & Noble in Marlton at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 31.  This lecture is part of Cappuccino Academy, a monthly series of free public lectures delivered by members of the Rutgers-Camden community at Barnes & Noble.  For information, call (856) 225-6627.  

Dr. Cook was also recently interviewed for "Marketplace," (FOX 29 TV, Philadelphia, Dec 11, 2007) about the role of targeted marketing to kids, ages 9-14, called "tween." >>> view the streaming video

Dr. Cook's research on "princess culture" was highlighted in Rutgers Focus (Feb 6, 2008). The article points to troubling aspects of merchandizing for children, especially girls. >>> read the article

CCCS and Barnes and Noble to Partner for Children’s Book Week Celebration and Fundraiser

Students representing Camden city’s Early Care and Education community arrived on the Rutgers Camden campus this fall for the start of the third phase of the Camden Professional Development Pathways Initiative. This program, developed by Senior Program Director, Angela Connor was recently awarded a two-year grant from the William Penn Foundation.
>>> read more

We are pleased to announce that Dr. Daniel Cook and Dr. Lynne Vallone will be joining the Childhood Studies program. Dr. Daniel Cook is the author of The Commodification of Childhood: The Children's Clothing Industry and the Rise of the Child Consumer and Children's Consumer Culture (forthcoming), editor of Symbolic Childhood and  The Lived Experiences of  Public Consumption (forthcoming), and a number of articles and chapters on children in American culture.  Dr. Cook received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago, and will be coming from the University of Illinois. Dr. Lynne Vallone is author of Disciplines of Virtue and Becoming Victoria, and co-editor of The Norton Anthology of Children's Literature,  Virtual Gender: Fantasies of Subjectivity and Embodiment, and The Girl's Own, Cultural Histories of the Anglo-American Girl, 1830-1915.  Dr. Vallone will be coming from Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas.

>>> Childhood Studies Program website

Bob Atkins, Assistant Professor of Nursing, RU-Newark received the Research Nurse of the Year Award by The Concerned Black Nurses of Newark at the 24th Annual Scholarship and Awards Luncheon on Saturday, May 6th, 2006. Atkins was being recognized for his research on the effect of stress in the home and neighborhood environment influence on the health and development of children and adolescents.
>>> For more information, please visit
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2006-05/rtsu-cbn050206.php

In March and April 2006, CCCS brought to campus another group of writers and authors to share their perspectives on childhood. The new Remembering Childhood: Meet the Authors, Hear Their Stories series is free and open to the public. No registration required. Some events took place in conjunction with the 18th annual Rutgers Camden Writers' Conference on Saturday, April 8, 2006.

For more information, directions to the campus, and to the Camden Children's Garden, click here to download a brochure.

Dr. Bill Whitlow received a 5-year $1.15 million grant from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA). This grant is for "SPARC 2000+: Science Fair Drug Abuse Science Literacy"

>>> more

The Center for Children and Childhood Studies
presents a CCCS Seminar with
Dr. Kathleen Jones
Dying Young: Stories from the History of American Youth Suicide

New 2007 Lecture Series:
Rethinking Childhood: Juveniles and the Justice System

Let Children be Children: Lewis Wickes Hine’s Crusade Against Child Labor will be on display at the Stedman Gallery from Monday, March 13,2006 – Saturday, May 6, 2006. Sociologist Lewis Wickes Hines (American, 1874-1940) photography captured his concern for children, immigrants and the working-class. The exhibition of 55 prints offers a revealing look at child labor practices at the onset of American industrialization and the circumstances that poor working children endured well into the late 1930’s. 
>>> more about the exhibition

Reception and Discussion –Thursday, March 30, 2006
Stedman Gallery - 5:30 pm – 7:30pm
Dr. Philip Kilbride, Professor of Anthropology at Bryn Mawr College discussed child labor practices in East Africa.

CCCS "Meet The Authors" series is planned for Spring 2006

In March and April 2006, CCCS will bring to campus another group of writers and authors to share their perspectives on childhood. The new Remembering Childhood: Meet the Authors, Hear Their Stories series is free and open to the public. Some events will take place in conjunction with the 18th annual Rutgers Camden Writers' Conference on Saturday, April 8, 2006.

For more information, directions to the campus, and to the Camden Children's Garden, click here to download a brochure.

The Rutgers University Press Book Series in Childhood Studies, edited by Dr. Myra Bluebond Langner, has released a new book in the series entitled, Girls in Trouble with the Law by Laurie Schaffner
Girls in Trouble with the Law takes us to the heart of life for adolescent girls in secure juvenile facilities across the United States. In bringing the voices of court-involved young women into the public conversation about youth crime, adolescent sexuality, and community violence, Laurie Schaffner’s vibrant ethnography offers new views of youth experiences with racism, poverty, violence, and sexuality as well as a critique of the ways gender and justice are produced in the juvenile legal system.
Laurie Schaffner is an assistant professor in the criminal justice and sociology department of the University of Illinois at Chicago. Her previous books include Teenage Runaways: Broken Hearts and "Bad Attitudes".

http://rutgerspress.rutgers.edu/acatalog/__Girls_in_Trouble_with_the_Law_2549.html#3645

This is the seventh book released in the series. For additional information on the series please visit:
http://children.camden.rutgers.edu/RU-book_series.htm

Cati Coe, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, has just released her book, Dilemmas of Culture in African Schools: Youth, Nationalism and the Transformation of Knowledge, published by University of Chicago Press.

Book Description In working to build a sense of nationhood, Ghana has focused on many social engineering projects, the most meaningful and fascinating of which has been the state's effort to create a national culture through its schools. As Cati Coe reveals in Dilemmas of Culture in African Schools, this effort has created an unusual paradox: while Ghana encourages its educators to teach about local cultural traditions, those traditions are transformed as they are taught in school classrooms. The state version of culture now taught by educators has become objectified and nationalized--vastly different from local traditions.

click on image to enlarge

Dr. Coe identifies the state's limitations in teaching cultural knowledge and discusses how Ghanaians negotiate the tensions raised by the competing visions of modernity that nationalism and Christianity have created. She reveals how cultural curricula affect authority relations in local social organizations--between teachers and students, between Christians and national elite, and between children and elders--and raises several questions about educational processes, state-society relations, the production of knowledge, and the making of Ghana's citizenry.

Congratulations from all of us, Cati!

>>> view more CCCS publications

We are proud to announce that the Rutgers University Press has published its fifth book in the Childhood Studies series, Armies of the Young: Child Soldiers in War and Terrorism, by David M. Rosen, Professor of Anthropology and Law at Fairleigh Dickinson University and member of the Center for Children and Childhood Studies Regional Seminar Series. For more information please visit, http://rutgerspress.rutgers.edu/acatalog/__Armies_of_the_Young_2296.html