| FT-55620-08 | Research Programs: Summer Stipends | Stephen Andrew Toth | Law and Order in the Loire: Gender and the Juvenile Delinquent of Fin-de-Siecle France | 6/1/2008 - 7/31/2008 | $6,000.00 | Stephen | Andrew | Toth | | | | Arizona State University | Tempe | AZ | 85281-3670 | USA | 2008 | European History | Summer Stipends | Research Programs | 6000 | 0 | 6000 | 0 |
This project focuses on how two institutions for juvenile delinquents--the Mettray agricultural colony for boys and the Maison du Refuge de Tours for girls--engaged in highly subjective practices that invoked gendered notions of child behavior in fin-de-siècle France. While both institutions were designed to instill the habits of order, discipline, self-control and cheerful submission to authority among their subjects, Mettray's primary objective was to transform male delinquents into hard-working, law-abiding, lower-class citizens, whereas the Maison du Refuge inculcated a bourgeois sensibility to female sexuality. By examining the individual case files of those incarcerated, I will explore the intricacies, complexities, and dilemmas of nineteenth-century social thought, particularly as it relates to deviance, gender, and concepts of childhood. |