The Play World

Patricia Anne Simpson is Professor of German Studies at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and coeditor of the Goethe Yearbook. She is the author of several books, including most recently Reimagining the European Family: Cultures of Immigration.

"Simpson's book is a welcome addition to discussions of the importance of the domestic sphere, and its artifacts and practices, for questions of cultural nationalism and transnational interplays. It shows the impact of toys and play on narratives of migration, the articulation of middle-class subjectivity, and the role of model childhoods in the self-identity of modern European family structures-and how they influenced European American family structures in their acquisition of racial, ethnic, and national regimes." -Karin A. Wurst, author of Fabricating Pleasure: Fashion, Entertainment, and Cultural Consumption in Germany, 1780-1830 "Within the burgeoning scholarship on play and the material culture of childhood, Simpson's The Play World stands out through its attention to a breathtaking range of texts and artifacts that lie at the margins of the canon; its brilliantly eclectic methodology (combining literary, material, and intellectual history with postcolonial studies, critical race theory, gender studies, disability studies, and much more); and its ability to illuminate complex cultural and commercial currents that connect German-speaking Europe with Africa, Great Britain, and the Americas from the seventeenth century to WWI. It's a remarkable book that will resonate within and beyond the field of childhood studies." -Elliott Schreiber, co-editor of Play in the Age of Goethe: Theories, Narratives, and Practices of Play around 1800 "A valuable intervention in the historiography of German childhood and play. Simpson's argument has tremendous sweep: exploring changes in childhood and parenting over centuries, the role of play in child development, the deployment of racial and imperial images, the circulation of images and toys across the Atlantic, and the decline of German influence on images of childhood in the twentieth century." -David Hamlin, German History