German Childhood – Perspective, Poetics, Perversion

Although ‘childhood’ is a rather new concept, from the outset artists have been eager to exhaust its representational potential, theorists tried to define children’s perspective, temporality, sexuality, ways of knowing, and institutions regulated but also protected children. With a timeframe from 1800 to the present, special emphasis will lie on NS, the anti-authoritarian movement of the 1960s as well as on Germany’s aspiration today to foster children’s autonomy. We will take up literary and aesthetic objects alongside material culture (children’s books, playgrounds) and pedagogical discourses (science, institutions, educational textbooks). Taught in German.