The Farm and Wilderness Summer Camps : Progressive Ideals in the Twentieth Century
The Farm and Wilderness Summer Camps : Progressive Ideals in the Twentieth Century
Click to enlarge
Author(s): Abel, Emily K.
ISBN No.: 9781978836631
Pages: 172
Year: 202312
Format: Trade Paper
Price: $ 38.57
Dispatch delay: Dispatched between 7 to 15 days
Status: Available

Although summer camps profoundly impact children, they have received little attention from scholars. The well-known Farm & Wilderness (F&W) camps, founded in 1939 by Ken and Susan Webb, resembled most other private camps of the same period in many ways, but F&W also had some distinctive features. Campers and staff took pride in the special ruggedness of the surrounding environment, and delighted in the exceptional rigor of the camping trips and the work projects. Importantly, the Farm & Wilderness camps were some of the first private camps to become racially integrated. The Farm & Wilderness Summer Camps: Progressive Ideals in the Twentieth Century traces these camps, both unique and emblematic of American youth culture of the twentieth century, from their establishment in the late 1930s to the end of the twentieth century. Emily K. Abel and Margaret K. Nelson explore how ideals considered progressive in the 1940s and 1950s had to be reconfigured by the camps to respond to shifts in culture and society as well as to new understandings of race and ethnicity, social class, gender, and sexual identity.


To illustrate this change, the authors draw on over forty interviews with former campers, archival materials, and their own memories. This book tells a story of progressive ideals, crises of leadership, childhood challenges, and social adaptation in the quintessential American summer camp.


To be able to view the table of contents for this publication then please subscribe by clicking the button below...
To be able to view the full description for this publication then please subscribe by clicking the button below...