BEGIN:VCALENDAR
VERSION:2.0
PRODID:-//Talks.cam//talks.cam.ac.uk//
X-WR-CALNAME:Talks.cam
BEGIN:VEVENT
SUMMARY:Constructing Childhood: Adjudicating Juvenile Offenders in Wartime
  China\, 1937-1945 - Lily Chang (Magdalene)
DTSTART:20120207T173000Z
DTEND:20120207T190000Z
UID:TALK35534@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Christian Schlaepfer
DESCRIPTION:"At the turn of the twentieth century\, as major Western power
 s coped with the aftermath of the First World War and later the Great Depr
 ession\; China was an isolated nation\, where after two thousand years of 
 imperial rule\, a republic was established and the monarchy overthrown by 
 a group of revolutionaries. The outbreak of China’s War of Resistance ag
 ainst Japan (1937-1945)\, more commonly folded into the Pacific component 
 of the Second World War\, in the first half of the twentieth-century serve
 d as a catalyst to an increase in criminality involving juveniles. \n\nDra
 wing upon on a series of previously unexamined legal case records of juven
 ile offenders adjudicated by the collaborationist Shanghai District Court 
 for the First Special Area from 1940 to 1941 as a case study\, this paper 
 examines the social impact war on urban juveniles in Shanghai brought abou
 t a new legal and social understanding of children and childhood in twenti
 eth-century China. This paper aims to show how the Court attempted to chal
 lenge the liminal space occupied by juveniles within the legal sphere that
  once marked the parameters of childhood and adulthood in the eyes of the 
 law. As a collective body\, the Court’s position on children could clear
 ly be identified through an analysis of its legal reasoning towards juveni
 le offenders during this two-year window. The aim of this paper is to demo
 nstrate how the war crystallised the attempts by the Court to introduce th
 e process of a “legal construction of childhood” through an analysis o
 f its legal reasoning towards juvenile offenders under wartime conditions.
 "
LOCATION:Seminar Room N7\, Pembroke College
END:VEVENT
END:VCALENDAR