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