Centre for the History of Childhood: Becoming a Person, 4 July 2009

Summer Common Room, Magdalen College, High Street, Oxford UK
Orgainized by Professor Laurence Brockliss and Professor George Rousseau. The conference probes concepts of personhood and identity in history.

9:30 – 9:45 Registration in the Summer Common Room

9:45 Introduction and Welcome by Laurence Brockliss (Magdalen College Oxford)

10:00 Olympia Bobou (Brasenose College Oxford), ‘A pais is a pais is a pais: the language of growing up in ancient Greece'

10:45 Sophie Oosterwijk (St Andrews University), ‘Cleansing power: Baptism and the medieval child’

11:30 TEA BREAK

12:00 George Rousseau (Magdalen College Oxford), 'Is Tristram Shandy a Person? Notions and Counter-notions of Personhood in the Enlightenment'

12:45 LUNCH in the New Room, Magdalen College

2:15 Laurence Brockliss (Magdalen College Oxford) and Richard Brown (Dalhousie University), ‘Marks of Personhood: Are Feral Children Human?’

Guest Chairs: Diane Smyth (St Mary’s Hospital, Imperial College Healthcare, London) and Lyn Fry (Psychologist)

3:00 Heather Montgomery (Open University), ‘Becoming a being: before or after birth? The anthropological evidence’.

3:45 AFTERNOON TEA BREAK

4:15 Dominic Wilkinson (Green Templeton and the Ethox Centre, Oxford): ‘Premature infants, late-term fetuses, viability and moral status'

5:00 Summing Up

5:30 CONFERENCE ENDS

The cost of attendance will be £30 for those who wish to take lunch in the New Room. For those simply wishing to attend the colloquium, there will be a charge of £10 to cover administration costs and tea and coffee. Cheques should be made out to ‘Magdalen College’ and sent to Laurence Brockliss at Magdalen College, Oxford, OX1 4AU

For more information, go to the Centre for the History of Childhood page.