Public lecture delivered in association with the Australia-Germany Joint Research Cooperation Scheme-funded project, “Child slaveries in the early modern world: Gender, trauma, and trafficking in transcultural perspective (1500-1800)”, supported by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) and Universities Australia

“Emotion and Experience. Dependent children in early modern societies”
Professor Claudia Jarzebowski (University of Bonn)
Thursday 13 April 2023, 4-5pm AEST
To be held in room 460.4.28, Level 4, 250 Victoria Parade and online via Teams.
For joining details, email: IHSS@acu.edu.au

Abstract: At all times children have lived in emotional and social dependencies. In early modern history, too, children of all classes were exposed to experiences of disruption, separation, death of kin, to violence (i.e. executions, wars), to torture (as subjects and bystanders), children experienced community and exclusion at the same time. And they were hardly ever in charge of their destinies. The question of how children perceived their often hostile or at least hard to anticipate environment has hardly ever been investigated. This presentation focusses upon such children, using rare sources and reading known sources against the grain. On a descriptive level I present a few case studies while on a more theoretical level my presentation will discuss how Trauma Studies could help historians to understand early modern life worlds of children a bit more.

Bio: Claudia Jarzebowski is a professor of Early Modern History at the Center for the Slavery and Dependency Studies at the University of Bonn, Germany. Her research interests include Gender History, the history of children and childhood, the history of emotions and the history of violence. She has published two monographs, numerous articles and co-edited numerous books, mostrecently two chapters in Cultural History
of Youth (Bloomsbury 2023). She has served as a Partner Investigator at the ARC Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions.