Peripheries at the Centre

Machteld Venken is Professor of Contemporary Transnational History at the Centre for Contemporary and Digital History of the University of Luxembourg. She is the author of Straddling the Iron Curtain? Immigrants, Immigrant Organisations, War Memories (2011) and editor of The Dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy: Border-Making and Its Consequences (2020).

• List of IllustrationsAcknowledgementsList of AbbreviationsIntroductionChapter 1. Schools, Language and Children during the First World WarChapter 2. A Framework of ComparisonChapter 3. Making the BorderChapter 4. Scaping the BorderChapter 5. A Universal ChildhoodConclusionAppendix: Belgian and Polish Governments and Ministers Responsible for EducationBibliographyIndex

“Peripheries at the Centre shows how the international border settlements after the First World War worked (or did not work) on the ground. We learn how pupils, their parents, and their principals maneuvered through changing legal and administrative regimes, and how those regimes were often riven by contradictions and failures in their application. Venken’s thought-provoking theses should interest scholars concerned with how international and national dynamics shape the everyday experiences, subjectivities, and scope of action for children in a variety of contested areas.” • Katherine Lebow, Oxford University“Peripheries at the Centre is a notable intervention in social history and an innovative contribution to current historiographical debates. It offers a deep comparison of German peripheral regions after 1918 in Poland and Belgium, and it sets up a theoretically sophisticated European analysis of the limits and inadequacies of nationally framed reform pedagogy, giving voice to children’s modernity.” • Steven Seegel, University of Northern Colorado