For over a century, summer camps have provided many American children's first experience of community beyond their immediate family and neighborhoods. Each summer, children experience the pain of homesickness, learn to swim, and sit around campfires at night. Children's Nature chronicles the history of the American summer camp, from its invention in the late nineteenth century through its rise in the first four decades of the twentieth century. Leslie Paris investigates how camps came to matter so greatly to so many Americans, while providing a window onto the experiences of the children who attended them and the aspirations of the adults who created them. Summer camps helped cement the notion of childhood as a time apart, at once protected and playful. Camp leaders promised that campers would be physically and morally invigorated by fresh mountain air, simple food, daily swimming, and group living, and thus better fit for the year to come. But camps were important as well because children delighted in them, helped to shape them, and felt transformed by them. Focusing primarily on the northeast, where camps were first founded and the industry grew most extensively, and drawing on a range of sources including camp films, amateur performances, brochures, oral histories, letters home, industry journals, camp newspapers, and scrapbooks, Children's Nature brings this special and emotionally resonant world to life.

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aAn insightful book about the evolution and significance of children's camps in American social and cultural life. For all of us who loved being at camp in the summer, Childrenas Nature is evocative and it provokes many memories.a
--Joan Jacobs Brumberg, author of "Fasting Girls"

For over a century, summer camps have provided many American childrenas first experience of community beyond their immediate family and neighborhoods. Each summer, children experience the pain of homesickness, learn to swim, and sit around campfires at night.

Childrenas Nature chronicles the history of the American summer camp, from its invention in the late nineteenth century through its rise in the first four decades of the twentieth century. Leslie Paris investigates how camps came to matter so greatly to so many Americans, while providing a window onto the experiences of the children who attended them and the aspirations of the adults who created them.

Summer camps helped cement the notion of childhood as a time apart, at once protected and playful. Camp leaders promised that campers would be physically and morally invigorated by fresh mountain air, simple food, daily swimming, and group living, and thus better fit for the year to come. But camps were important as well because children delighted in them, helped to shape them, and felt transformed by them. Focusing primarily on the northeast, where camps were first founded and the industry grew most extensively, and drawing on a range of sources including camp films, amateur performances, brochures, oral histories, letters home, industry journals, camp newspapers, and scrapbooks, Childrenas Nature brings this special and emotionally resonant world to life.

The Girls' History and Culture Reader: The Nineteenth Century provides scholars, instructors, and students with the most influential essays that have defined the field of American girls' history and culture. A relatively new and energetic field of inquiry, girl-centered research is critical for a fuller understanding of women and gender, a deeper consideration of childhood and adolescence, and a greater acknowledgment of the significance of generation as a historical force in American culture and society. Bringing together work from top scholars of women and youth, The Girls' History and Culture Reader: The Nineteenth Century addresses topics ranging from diary writing and toys to prostitution and slavery. Covering girlhood and the relationships between girls and women, this pioneering volume tackles pivotal themes such as education, work, play, sexuality, consumption, and the body. The reader also illuminates broader nineteenth-century developments-including urbanization, industrialization, and immigration--through the often-overlooked vantage point of girls. As these essays collectively suggest, nineteenth-century girls wielded relatively little political or social power but carved out other spaces of self-expression. Contributors are Carol Devens, Miriam Forman-Brunell, Jane H. Hunter, Anya Jabour, Anne Scott MacLeod, Susan McCully, Mary Niall Mitchell, Leslie Paris, Barbara Sicherman, Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, Christine Stansell, Nancy M. Theriot, and Deborah Gray White.

The Girls' History and Culture Reader: The Twentieth Century provides scholars, instructors, and students with the most influential essays that have defined the field of American girls' history and culture. A relatively new and energetic field of inquiry, girl-centered research is critical for a fuller understanding of women and gender, a deeper consideration of childhood and adolescence, and a greater acknowledgment of the significance of generation as a historical force in American culture and society. Bringing together work from top scholars of women and youth, The Girls' History and Culture Reader: The Twentieth Century illustrates girls' centrality to major twentieth-century forces such as immigration, labor, feminism, and consumerism. Themes in this pioneering volume include girls' use of fashion and music, their roles as workers, their friendships, and new ideas about girls' bodies. While girls in the twentieth century found new avenues for personal ambition and self-expression, especially at school and in the realm of leisure and popular culture, they continued to wrestle with traditional ideas about feminine identity, socialization, and sexuality. Contributors are Joan Jacobs Brumberg, Rachel Devlin, Susan J. Douglas, Miriam Forman-Brunell, Kyra D. Gaunt, Mary Celeste Kearney, Ilana Nash, Mary Odem, Leslie Paris, Kathy Peiss, Vicki L. Ruiz, Kelly Schrum, and Judy Yung.