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Ilana Nash

Even casual visitors to the American Memory website are bound to find themselves lingering longer than intended, drawn in by the website's compelling… [more]

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Merry Wiesner-Hanks

The case study uses information on orphans living under colonial regimes to shed light on issues in early modern history, including maritime expansion, gender norms, and changing patterns of poverty, providing insight into attitudes toward one particular group of children in an era of competition for wealth and dominance among European powers. echo [more]

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Julia Mickenberg

Children's literature in this case study uses Louisa May Alcott's Little Women (1868-69) to explore changing notions about childhood, giving insight into the changing position of girls and women in American society, from the ordinary aspects of children's daily lives in the late 19th century to the ethical and moral assumptions that guided young people at this time in their thinking about class, gender, nationality, friendship, marriage, parenthood, and other issues. echo [more]

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Suggestion for handling orphans, devised in 1655 by Manoel Severim de Faria, an official for the bishop of Evora in Portugal. Here Severim de Faria speaks about the role orphaned children could and should play in the Portuguese empire. Students need… [more]

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Joseph Thomson traveled through Kenya Maasailand from 1883 to 1884 on a journey of exploration from the coast to Mt Kenya and Lake Victoria, under the auspices of the Royal Geographical Society. He was the second European to visit the area. Thomson… [more]

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The European Commission on Human Rights was the vehicle by which individuals could appeal to the European Court of Human Rights, an arm of the Council of Europe and an organization committed to European integration. In 1994, in the context of a… [more]

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Morris Ploscowe was a graduate of Harvard law school who served as chief clerk of the Court of Special Sessions, and later as magistrate, in New York City. Ploscowe also served on the staff of the Wickersham Commission that investigated Prohibition… [more]

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This 25-second "kinetoscope" shot on Vitagraph's roof-top studio in New York City by Thomas A. Edison Inc. in 1898/1899, sheds light on shifting notions of girlhood at the turn of the 20th century. In Victorian children's stories, a father who buried… [more]

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The Arena was an evangelical Christian periodical published in Boston that was known for its advocacy of social reform and women's issues, such as birth control. In 1895, it published a series of articles on age of consent reform edited by Helen… [more]

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Nora E. Jaffary

The Atlantic Slave Trade and Slave Life in the Americas: A Visual Record amasses over 1,200 images documenting the history of the Atlantic slave trade… [more]