This American Studies Association 2025 panel seeks papers that consider the role of children and childhood in histories of medicine. From experiments across medical, scientific, and social scientific disciplines to issues of consent and privacy to interventions that delimit trajectories of child development, histories of medicine have helped shape childhoods–its bounds, temporalities, and norms–and children have helped to shape medicine–its protocols, rationales, and knowledges. 

Drawing on the conference theme “Late Stage American Empire?” we seek papers at the intersection of childhood and medicine that consider how children's positions in healthcare and other biopolitical systems have been central to empire building and expansion. We are interested in papers that explore the experiences, knowledges, and histories of communities and persons who have navigated, survived, and/or challenged practitioners and institutions that have subjected them to harm under the guise of advancement and progress. We are interested in papers that illuminate the pivotal role children have played in the production of medical and scientific knowledges, securing gendered, sexual, and/or racialized boundaries, and/or that reveal the centrality of children/childhood to these fields.

We welcome proposals from any historical period as well as proposals that approach these issues informed by indigenous, critical race, queer, feminist, ecocritical, anthropological, historical, sociological, and/or literary methods. We especially welcome proposals from graduate students and early career scholars. Please note that should your proposal be accepted, you must be a member of the ASA by February 1, 2025.

Please send your 300-word proposal and a bio to Mary Zaborskis (mzz5335@psu.edu) by January 17, 2025. Decisions will be made within a week of the submission deadline.