Adulthood in Britain and the United States from 1350 to Generation Z
9781908590831
9781908590824
Distributed for University of London Press
Adulthood in Britain and the United States from 1350 to Generation Z
Employing adulthood as a category of historical analysis.
Who gets to be an adult—and who decides? This book argues that consideration of age is a crucial element in scholarship that addresses power and inequality. Exploring how concepts of adulthood have changed over time in Britain and the United States from 1350 to the present day, the essays collected here engage with the intersectional identities of gender, race, class, sexuality, and disability, and ask how these affect understandings of adulthood.
Who gets to be an adult—and who decides? This book argues that consideration of age is a crucial element in scholarship that addresses power and inequality. Exploring how concepts of adulthood have changed over time in Britain and the United States from 1350 to the present day, the essays collected here engage with the intersectional identities of gender, race, class, sexuality, and disability, and ask how these affect understandings of adulthood.
Table of Contents
* Introduction
*Laura Tisdall and Maria Cannon*
* 1 “Middle age” in the Middle Ages of Western Europe, c.1350–c.1530
*Deborah Youngs*
* 2 Constructing the ideal adult in early modern England
*Maria Cannon*
* 3 Spiritual maturity and childishness in English Protestant rhetoric, 1600—1660
*Emily Robson*
* 4 The rising generation and the fogram: locating adulthood in eighteenth-century England
*Barbara Crosbie*
* 5 “\[T\]he daughter became of age”: negotiating female dependence and adulthood in the legal system of the early United States
*Holly White*
* 6 Defining adulthood by behaviour: children as adult defendants in U.S. criminal justice, 1899–2015
*Jack Hodgson*
* 7 “Childish, adolescent and recherché”: psychological science and maturity in job selection in Britain, c.1940s–60s
*Grace Worrall-Campbell*
* 8 Black and South Asian adolescents, adulthood and the “generation gap” in Cold War Britain, c.1960–c.1989
*Laura Tisdall*
* 9 ”The pill for the unmarried girl is hardly going to improve her character”: gender and the extension of adolescence in debates around contraceptive accessvility in Scotland, c.1968–1990
*Kristin Hay*
* 10 A road of one’s own: the rejection of standard adulthood in US emerging adult films
*Andrea Regueira Martin*
* Afterword
*Kristine Alexander*
*Laura Tisdall and Maria Cannon*
* 1 “Middle age” in the Middle Ages of Western Europe, c.1350–c.1530
*Deborah Youngs*
* 2 Constructing the ideal adult in early modern England
*Maria Cannon*
* 3 Spiritual maturity and childishness in English Protestant rhetoric, 1600—1660
*Emily Robson*
* 4 The rising generation and the fogram: locating adulthood in eighteenth-century England
*Barbara Crosbie*
* 5 “\[T\]he daughter became of age”: negotiating female dependence and adulthood in the legal system of the early United States
*Holly White*
* 6 Defining adulthood by behaviour: children as adult defendants in U.S. criminal justice, 1899–2015
*Jack Hodgson*
* 7 “Childish, adolescent and recherché”: psychological science and maturity in job selection in Britain, c.1940s–60s
*Grace Worrall-Campbell*
* 8 Black and South Asian adolescents, adulthood and the “generation gap” in Cold War Britain, c.1960–c.1989
*Laura Tisdall*
* 9 ”The pill for the unmarried girl is hardly going to improve her character”: gender and the extension of adolescence in debates around contraceptive accessvility in Scotland, c.1968–1990
*Kristin Hay*
* 10 A road of one’s own: the rejection of standard adulthood in US emerging adult films
*Andrea Regueira Martin*
* Afterword
*Kristine Alexander*