Andie Speed

Because my research focuses on child seasonal migration in the Austrian Alps, I am broadly interested in the development of modern border controls and international child protection. In my classes, I tend to focus on the development of forms of “remote control” – including the emergence of the international visa system – and how nation states can obscure regional forms of identity by treating borders as social containers. I am similarly interested in the way shifting sensibilities have informed institutional support for the “best interests of the child” over the last century. In fits and starts, human rights reformers have emphasized that children enjoy rights that are distinct from, and sometimes may conflict with, those of parents, broader families, and communities. Students in my classes will also discover my interest in maps and, through programs like QGIS, mapping. Prior to coming to Western, I taught at Vanderbilt University during my Ph.D. and spent several years on research fellowships in Germany.

Courses Taught:

• HIST 100: Topics in World History, Migration and Mobility
• HIST 302: Topics in World History, Nation and Nationalism
• HIST 313: Topics in Modern European History, Early Modern Empires

Publications

• “On Sunlit Fields: The Swabian Children, Legal Personhood, and the Tyrolean Statthalterei’s Edict of 1867,” German Studies Review, vol. 47, no. 1 (Feb. 2024), 125 – 143.
• “Pious Guardians: The Swabian Children Association and public welfare in the Tyrolean Alps, 1891–1915,” in Citizenship, Migration, and Social Rights: Historical Experiences from the 1870s to the 1970s, ed. Beate Althammer (Routledge, 2023), 99 – 118.