Italian noblewomen presented soft, absorbent, linen towels with indigo woven borders to birthing mothers during the 14th century and later. The cultural context of the towels is illustrated in Italian paintings of the period depicting childbirth… [more]
In this painting of a kuttab, or primary school, boys sit on a mat or carpet huddled close together with their writing boards. Boys, and sometimes girls, learned to recite the Qur'an at an early age, as well as the basics of reading, writing, and… [more]
The image by 13th–century illustrator al-Wasiti is from the Maqamat (Assemblies), a collection of stories of a picaresque hero. The author, al-Hariri (1054-1122 CE), is an important figure in Arabic literary history. The illustrations belong to the… [more]
The image by 13th–century illustrator al-Wasiti (fl. 1237) is from the Maqamat (Assemblies), a collection of stories of a picaresque hero. In the upper half of the illustration, a boy in a short tunic and cap with tiraz embroidered bands, leads… [more]
This module traces the shifting ways that age of consent laws have been defined, debated and deployed worldwide and from the Middle Ages to the present, and explores how such laws figure in debates over the nature of childhood, adolescence, and adulthood, in campaigns against prostitution and child marriage, and teenage pregnancy, as well as struggles to achieve gender and sexual equality.
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The famous Three-Character Classic, a children's primer attributed to Wang Yin-lin (1223-1296) whose text consists of rhymed verse developed to help children increase their vocabulary in Chinese characters, provides a valuable introduction to the… [more]
This panel painting represents an innovation in the history of western European painting and a moment in religious iconography: depiction of the Virgin Mary and the infant Jesus in Byzantine icons was traditionally symbolic. In the past, the figures… [more]
