241 Urban Issues Researching Colonial Childhoods: Images and Representations of Children in Nigerian Newspaper Press, 1925-1950 Saheed Aderinto Abstract: This article takes an introductory excursion into newspaper sources for researching Nigerian children’s history during the colonial period by analyzing and describing items including news, editorials, stories, photos, advertisements, columns, debates, features, and letters among others. It situates these newspaper sources within the context of the circumstances under which they were produced and the prevailing politics of identity, gender, and agency, on the one hand, and the interaction between the forces of “tradition” and “modernity” on the other. Instead of approaching children’s experience from the well-established stand- points of disease, violence, delinquency and crime, this paper examines the fol- lowing areas: children and education; children and motherhood; and children as consumers. These uncharted areas of Nigerian children’s history render alterna- tive and useful perspectives on agency and the centrality of childhood to colonial state’s ideas of progress, civilization, modernity, and social stability. Résumé: Cet article relate une exploration initiale à travers des sources journalis- tiques pour effectuer une recherche sur l’histoire des enfants du Nigeria pendant la période coloniale par la description et l’analyse entre autres de nouvelles, d’édi- toriaux, d’histoires, de photos, de publicités, de rubriques, de débats, de chroniques, et de lettres. L’article situe ces sources journalistiques dans le con- texte et les circonstances dans lesquels elles ont été produites: l’opinion politique History in Africa, Volume 39 (2012), pp. 241–266 Saheed Aderinto is Assistant Professor of History at Western Carolina University, Cullowhee NC. He is the co-author of Nigeria, Nationalism, and Writing History (Rochester NY, University of Rochester Press, 2010) and co-editor of The Third Wave of Historical Scholarship on Nigeria: Essays in Honor of Ayodeji Olukoju (New- castle upon Tyne, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2012). Aderinto’s areas of specialization include Nationalism and Historiography, Gender and Sexuality, Children and Childhood, and Popular Culture.