Children and Childhood in World War I Lebanon: Class, Crisis and Social Perceptions of a Vulnerable Group

Recorded January 16th, 2025. A hybrid seminar by Dr Tylor Brand (Near & Middle Eastern Studies, TCD) as part of the Medical and Health Humanities Seminar Series. Children were among the most vulnerable groups within the famine that struck Lebanon during World War I, which made them a special focus of humanitarian interventions during the wartime period. However, shifting social perceptions of poverty and vulnerability over the years of the famine altered how people who lived the crisis regarded children, and even the very concept of childhood. Based on memoirs, humanitarian reports, and contemporary accounts, I argue that as a "discourse among adults" (Maksudyan, 2014) childhood in the famine was conceptually fractured and redefined according to famine-specific biases. As a result, a child's identity and social standing made them either worthy of a protected childhood that shielded them from the realities of the famine, or of pity and often revulsion befitting their physical and social misery.  Speaker: Tylor Brand is assistant professor in Near and Middle Eastern Studies at Trinity College, Dublin. He specializes in the history of crisis and famine in the Middle East, in particular the famine in Lebanon during World War I. His book, Famine Worlds: Life at the Edge of Suffering in Lebanon’s Great War (Stanford University Press, 2023) examines the intimate effects of famine on the lives and the perceptions of those who endured the crisis in World War I Lebanon. Learn more at www/tcd/ie/trinitylongroomhub