The Visual Cultures of Childhood

The visual has become a central theme in the study of childhood both as a research subject and a research method. The last two decades have seen huge interest in how children are represented in visual culture and how they in turn engage with visual cultures - as producers, audiences, and sometimes both. This innovative book gives a historical and geographic perspective on visual cultures of childhood, looking at representation as well as media effects. The main themes of the book are the strong presence of children in visual cultures in the modern period and the uses of this visual record for understanding how childhood is represented and constructed - as gendered, racialised and class-based. It covers social realism, melodrama and activism. Visual cultures of childhood are significant cultural resources that children draw on to understand and learn how to perform social identities. The access that teens now have to making their own visual productions and how the representation of gender, race and class than they produce compare to those produced by adults for children is interesting and very rich ground to conduct research on. It also speaks to current political concerns about, for example, how youth understand citizenship.