European Teenage Soldiers of World War I: From Transgression to Filiation

Tuesday, November 14, 4:30-6pm, Mershon Center for International Security Studies, 1501 Neil Ave., Rm. 120

The study of “teen-combatants” is a growing subfield in the history of children at war, the history of war violence in general, and World War I in particular. Too young to be legally enlisted as conscripts in 1914-1918, teen combatants also felt that they were too old to remain on the home front. This lecture will explore the cross-European phenomenon of “teen-combatants” both as a rite of passage into male adulthood and as a transgression of wartime norms.

Manon Pignot is a French historian specializing in the experience of children during World War I and in war more broadly. She is a senior lecturer at the Jules Verne University of Picardy and a junior member of the Institut Universitaire de France. She is author of The Crayon War: When the little Parisians drew the Great War (Editions Parigramme, 2004); Let’s go children of the fatherland: Generation Great War (Le Seuil, 2012); The child-soldier, 19th to 21st century: A critical approach (Armand Colin, 2012); and Paris in the Great War (Editions Parigramme, 2014).