The primary purpose of this course is to provide students with a broad overview of children and childhood throughout history. Special attention will be given to the debates over the construction of childhood as found in the works of Philippe Aries, Lawrence Stone, Linda Pollock and Steven Ozment. We will also examine childrearing techniques and look at the experiences of illegitimate and abandoned children. This course will examine the lives of children in late antiquity, the Middle Ages, Reformation Germany and colonial North America.