Kolloquium: Rembrandt and Cats on the Regulation of Children’s Emotions in Early Modern Europe

The Center for the History of Emotions at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development, led by Prof. Ute Frevert, cordially invites all interested to attend its summer semester 2017 colloquium.

Jeroen J. H. Dekker, University of Groningen

Rembrandt and Cats on the Regulation of Children’s Emotions in Early Modern Europe

Coping with the regulation of children’s behaviour and emotions in Early Modern Europe was part of a missionary movement to raise the educational literacy of parents. This movement, inspired by the Northern European Renaissance belief in the power of education with Erasmus as its most influential representative, and by the Reformation belief in the effectiveness of catechism, resulted in a great supply of family and child rearing advice (emblem) books, and of genre paintings and drawings on child rearing. By looking at a sample of 17th century popular emblems by Jacob Cats, the presentation will raise the question of how to assess popular sources (Cats) and outstanding ones (Rembrandt drawings) for this topic, and what they could tell us about educational modernity in this pre-Enlightenment period of history.

Jeroen J. H. Dekker is Professor and Chair of History and Philosophy of Education at the University of Groningen. Prior to this he was Senior Lecturer in History at Maastricht University and Lecturer in History of Education at Utrecht University. He is Co-Editor-in-Chief of Paedagogica Historica, member of the Editorial Board of History of Education, Historia y Memoria de la Educación, Annali di storia dell’Educazione e delle Istituzioni Educative, member of the Leuven Research Community on Philosophy and History of the Discipline of Education, and of the State commission for the investigation into violence of Children in out of home care after 1945.