This roundtable discussion takes the diversity of discourse and practice shaping modern knowledge about childhood as an opportunity to engage with recent historiographical approaches in the history of science. It draws attention to symmetries and references among scientific, material, literary and artistic cultures and their respective forms of knowledge. The five participating scholars come from various fields in the humanities and social sciences and illustrate historiographical and methodological questions at a range of examples: Topics include the emergence of children's rooms in US consumer magazines; research on the unborn in nineteenth century sciences of development; the framing of autism in nascent child psychiatry; German literary discourses about the child's initiation in scripture; and the socio-politics of racial identity in the photographic depiction of African American infant corpses in the early twentieth century. Throughout the course of the paper, 2 childhood emerges as a topic particularly prone to interdisciplinary perspectives that consider the history of science part of a broader history of knowledge. TEXTWith the rise of the human sciences in the late nineteenth century, children became objects of empirical scientific investigation. A multitude of new disciplines, including paediatrics, child studies, child psychology, pedagogy, and ergonomics, inaugurated experimental and psychophysical exploration: the performance of children was measured with new technological devices such as the ergograph and the Ästhesiometer; the working of their minds analysed in drawings and toy-usage; their learning abilities assessed in laboratories and experimental settings; their behaviour disciplined through educational programs and ergonomically designed working environments. 1 This developing scientific and material culture focused on the child was mirrored, multiplied and countered in artistic, cultural and social discourses; be it in the booming genre of school-literature, reform pedagogical projects, or political agendas of 'Staatsbürgerliche Erziehung,' 2 knowledge about children figured centre stage in the public sphere. 3 The diversity of discourse and practice shaping modern knowledge about childhood makes childhood a test case for recent historiographical approaches and methodological discussions in the history of science. In particular, it lends itself to histories of knowledge that no longer conceptualize science as a distinct enterprise but rather as a cultural practice that does not necessarily differ fundamentally from other cultural practices, including literature, arts and even household activities. 4 However, approaching scientific and cultural practices as part of an interdisciplinary 3 history of knowledge poses particular methodological challenges. How do we deal, for instance, with a diverse set of analytic tools and how do we relate different forms of knowledge to each other? What kind of historical claims can be made on the basis of literary (i.e. fictional) texts and objects of...

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Emotionally Disturbed provides a biography of an important institution in the history of child mental health care: so-called "residential treatment centers" (RTCs) that were promoted in the USA in the mid-twentieth century as a progressive alternative to traditional settings of custody and care. Doroshow's book both contextualizes the rise and decline of RCTs in US political and cultural history and furnishes an in-depth description of the practices at these centers during their heydays in the 1940s-1960s. Clearly written and rich in detail, her book opens not only a window on a little-known chapter in the history of US child psychiatry, but also points to lasting questions and challenges for child mental health care today. In this review, I will convey a notion of the rich material of the book, staying close to Doroshow's "thick description" (p. 5), and conclude with some of the broader questions that the book raises. The fi rst chapter traces how RCTs emerged in the 1920s to 1940s at the confl uence of various intellectual, institutional, and political trends. Doroshow situates their foundation in a larger shift from punitive to rehabilitative approaches to troublesome children, advanced by the mental hygiene movement, child guidance clinics, the juvenile justice system and child welfare legislation. Against this background, Doroshow argues that RCTs created "emotional disturbance" as a new clinical problem. The centers fashioned themselves as pioneering spaces that understood delinquent and socially disturbing behavior as the expression of psychodynamic problems and offered help for children that would otherwise have been sent to custodial institutions, state mental hospitals or asylums. Chapters 2-6 dive into the daily practices at the centers and paint a nuanced picture of the residential lives of children during the 1940s to 1960s, drawing on a rich array of sources including case fi les, testimonies of parents, oral history interviews, popular media and scientifi c and medical publications. Most commonly, children found their way to an RCT through the juvenile justice system. While the treatment included the separation of the child from his or her home, the program emphasized continuous work with the family through casework and interviews. Based on contemporary psychoanalytic theory, emotional disturbance was attributed to dysfunctional patterns of family interactions. Casework, individual therapy, and the stay in the therapeutic environment of the RCT were meant to approach the problem from complementary angles. Accordingly, treatment relied on collaboration among psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, and residential workers. However, Doroshow points out

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