Webcast sponsored by the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre and hosted by the UBC School of Nursing and the Consortium for Nursing History Inquiry. This presentation explores how health professionals contributed to conceptions of “the healthy child” in early twentieth century Canada. Based on her recently published book entitled Small Matters: Canadian Children in Sickness and Health, 1900 to 1940 (McGill- Queens, 2013), Mona Gleason will focus on how and why increasing attention to the health of children on the part of doctors, nurses and educators in schools changed the culture of childhood and the culture of nursing in this critical period of change. Gleason asks how, and with what consequences for youngsters and their families, adult professionals contributed to the social construction of what was considered “healthy” and “normal.”
Mona Gleason is a Professor in the Department of Educational Studies at UBC. She specializes in the history of children and youth and the history of education. Her new book, Small Matters: Canadian Children in Sickness and in Health, 1900-1940 appeared in 2013 with McGill-Queens University Press.
Select Articles Available at UBC Library
Barman, J., & Gleason, M. (2003). Children, teachers and schools in the history of British Columbia. Calgary: Detselig Enterprises.
Gleason, M. (2006). Between education and memory: Health and childhood in english-canada, 1900-1950. Scientia Canadensis, 29(1), 49-72. doi:10.7202/800503ar. [Link]
Gleason, M. (2013). Small matters: Canadian children in sickness and health, 1900-1940. Montreal; Ithaca: McGill-Queen’s University Press.
Gleason, M. L. (2010). Lost kids: Vulnerable children and youth in twentieth-century Canada and the united states. Vancouver: UBC Press.
Gleason, M., Scholars Portal Books: Canadian Electronic Library, & Canadian Publishers Collection. (1999). Normalizing the ideal: Psychology, schooling, and the family in postwar Canada. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. doi:10.3138/j.ctt2tv3m3. [Link]
UBC Library Research Guides