Dr. Patrick Ryan

Department Chair/Associate Professor

Phone: 4442
Email: pryan2@uwo.ca

Patrick J. Ryan is an historian of childhood and youth with training in policy and law, and has a developed research interest in the history of ideas, discourse analysis, and Foucauldian thought. He earned his doctorate at Case Western Reserve University in 1998, and came to Kings University College to help establish the childhood and youth studies program in 2003. He is author of dozens of academic articles, multi-media features, and the 2013 book: Master-Servant Childhood: a history of the idea of childhood in Medieval English culture. He is a former President of and current Editor for the largest academic organization in his field: the Society for the History of Children and Youth.

Teaching

Dr. Ryan has taught over 20 different courses at KUC, most recently CYS 2212F/G Childhood and the Law, CYS 2210F/G Childhood and Social Policy, CYS 3313F/G Research Methodologies using Discourse Analysis, CYS 3314F/G Research Methodologies in Governmentality Studies, CYS 3361F/G and History 3261F/G The History of Childhood in Canada, History 3851F/G Capitalism and the Law.

Research

History of childhood and youth, governmentality studies, law, labour, poverty, and discourse.

External Engagements:

Dr. Ryan is the Editor of the online scholarly magazine of the Society for the History of Children and Youth, hosted by Kings University College, at http://www.shcy.org. He also serves as the senior managing editor for the scholarly network H-Childhood on H-Net.

Current Projects:

• “Childhood and the Law in Canada,” a textbook under contract with LexisNexis Canada.
• “Childhood and the Rise of the Governmental State in America,” a book under contract with Palgrave MacMillan

Selected Publications

View a complete listing of Dr. Ryan's publications.

"The 'government of heroic women': childhood, discipline, and the discourse of poverty -  'Kontrolle durch heroische Frauen': Kindheit, Disziplin und der Armustsdiskurs," in Bildungsgeschichte – International Journal for the Historiography of Education vol. 7, no. 2 (2017): 173-190.

Childhood History & Critique (Season 1)

• S1 Ep15 - "Violence & Power - Part 2" - June 22, 2015 (pdf) (5,800-word essay, 39 min. conversation with Ben Parsons, Lecturer at the University of Leicester, UK)
• S1 Ep14 - "Violence & Power - Part 1" - June 8, 2015 (pdf) (6,200-word essay, 37 min. conversation with Peter Kelly, Assoc. Professor at RMIT University, Australia)

Master-Servant Childhood: a history of the idea of childhood in medieval English culture.  (Palgrave MacMillan, 2013) 

"Interview with Patrick Ryan," (an 'ask-the-author' discussion of the Landscape of Modern Childhood) filmed for the course "Understanding the Young Child," in the Master of Professional Education Program, Curriculum Studies, at Western University, September 5, 2013. "Audio Only Version."

"How New is the 'New' Social Studies of Childhood? The Myth of a Paradigm Shift," Journal of Interdisciplinary History, vol. 38, no. 4 (Spring, 2008): 553-576.

Publications in the Last 5 years (click here for a complete listing):

"Building Careers and the Future in SHCY," an invited multi-media roundtable as part of the Origins Project for SHCY Online, www.shcy.org, April 18, 2021.

"COVID-19 Graduate Student Roundtable," SHCY Features, SHCY Online, www.shcy.org, May 6, 2020.

"A Reflection on 'After the Century of the Child,'" in Contextualizing Childhoods : Growing Up in Europe and North America edited by Sally McNamee and Sam Frankel (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019): 63-72.

"SHCY Survey Report - 2017," in SHCY Commentaries on www.shcy.org (October, 2018).

"The 'government of heroic women': childhood, discipline, and the discourse of poverty -  'Kontrolle durch heroische Frauen': Kindheit, Disziplin und der Armustsdiskurs," in Bildungsgeschichte – International Journal for the Historiography of Education vol. 7, no. 2 (2017): 173-190.

"Childhood as Discourse," in Childhood Studies edited by Heather Montgomery Oxford Bibliographies On-line (Oxford University Press, 2016).

Childhood: History & Critique - Season 2 -  You can find the audio portion CHC by searching for "SHCY" on itunes, google play, or where ever you get your podcasts.  This multimedia series circulating to 1,800 scholars on H-Childhood; visual and textual dimensions are permanently available through the website of the Society for the History of Children and Youth.  The second season of CHC was a collaboration of 7 episodes with Ning de Coninck-Smith and Martin Woodside.  P. Ryan edited all the episodes, and wrote/hosted the following three