The overall aim of the program is to explore new approaches to the study of families, kinship and households that have emerged over the past couple of decades. The history of the family, for example, has been revitalized by scholars interested in the history of race, gender and sexuality who have documented some of the ways in which the family across time and place has been a site of dynamic change laden with cultural meaning. Simultaneously, the incorporation of age and generation as analytical categories in historical scholarship have spurred new studies of the dynamics of social and cultural change, and the operations of power in families and households. Recent interest in the history of children and childhood has also drawn renewed attention to families and households, and to the ways in which kinship has been produced, and reproduced across time and place. Finally, the ‘material turn’ in history and the resurgence of economic history has brought renewed attention to the complex relationship among domestic spaces, family structures, and changing economic conditions. The CHR program is designed to bring these separate, and often distinct, new fields of inquiry into conversation with each other and examine the contours of what might be called a New Family History.
Applications can be submitted via email or regular mail.
Questions should be directed to the Program Chair, Birgitte Soland (Soland.1@osu.edu) or to the CHR director, John Brooke (Brooke.10@osu.edu)
