In 2020, the American Historical Review published a roundtable exchange, entitled “Rethinking the History of Childhood,” that highlighted key debates in the history of childhood and revealed sharp methodological and intellectual disagreements about the past problems and future directions of this small but steadily growing subfield. At the core of the debate was the contention that historians should write history “through” children – that is, using children as a novel lens through which to illuminate larger issues such as war, slavery, racism, and colonialism – rather than writing the history “of” children – that is, simply taking children as the main object of historical study. Yet, as several contributors noted, methodological debates pertaining to the history of children/childhood continue to reflect the predominance of Europe and the Americas within the field. In fact, the one point on which everyone seemed to agree is that the continued intellectual relevance and vitality of the field depend on globalizing the history of childhood by better incorporating histories of non-Euro-American regions into its debates.

Engaging with these methodological preoccupations that continue to trouble and intellectually ignite the field, this panel explores what research on East Asia can contribute to the still Euro-American centric field of the history of childhood – as well as how a focus on children can unsettle dominant narratives of modern East Asian history. Employing a diverse range of sources and methodological approaches, the papers in this panel offer new perspectives on familiar debates about the agency of children as marginalized subjects and the meanings of childhood as a political, cultural, and social category. At the same time, they answer the call to link the history of children to “larger” historical issues, including wartime memory, gender politics, and Cold War foreign relations. The panel invites historians of childhood to consider how perspectives from East Asia can contribute to globalizing and revitalizing the field. Moreover, it hopes to spark discussion and debate among the broader community of historians—including those who remain dubious of the intellectual value of historical research on children—about how histories of and through children can challenge and reshape broader historical narratives.