Books
The Bloomsbury Handbook of Theories in Childhood Studies, Sarada Balagopalan, John Wall, and Karen Wells, editors, Bloomsbury Publishers, 2024
“A wonderful new resource for researchers and students interested in leading edge concepts in childhood studies.” John Horton, University of Northampton, UK
Give Children the Vote: On Democratizing Democracy, John Wall, Bloomsbury Publishers, 2022
“Future generations will ponder why children were for so long denied the right to have their views represented at the ballot box, just as we wonder why societies argued against the right of women and people of colour to vote. Professor John Wall has written a scholarly work that is also a gripping read.” Neena Modi, Professor of Neonatal Medicine, Imperial College London, UK
Exploring Children's Suffrage: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Ageless Voting, John Wall, editor, Palgrave Macmillan, 2022
This edited volume offers a critical, thorough, and interdisciplinary examination of arguments for eliminating the minimum democratic voting age.
Children's Rights: Today's Global Challenge, John Wall, Rowman & Littlefield, 2016
"Free of jargon and a pleasure to read, this is a book for every reader who cares about the future of human rights." Barbara Bennett Woodhouse, LQC Lamar Professor of Law, Emory University; director, Child Rights Project
Children and Armed Conflict: Cross-Disciplinary Investigations, Daniel Thomas Cook and John Wall, editors, Palgrave Macmillan, 2011
“[A] strikingly fresh collection of essays that brings a strong empirical and multidisciplinary approach to an issue dominated by ideology and rhetoric.” Professor David Rosen, Fairleigh Dickson University
Ethics in Light of Childhood, John Wall, Georgetown University Press, 2010
"Get ready for a new paradigm in ethics that author John Wall calls ‘childism.’ It may be as exciting for ethics as feminism was thirty years ago and be central to moral debates for decades to come.” Don Browning, professor emeritus, The University of Chicago
Moral Creativity: Paul Ricoeur and the Poetics of Possibility, John Wall, Oxford University Press, 2005
“[A] deeply reflective, personally engaged, intellectually robust journey into the very meaning of ‘creativity’ in its cultural, ontological, aesthetic and ethical dimensions.” Richard Kearney, The Charles Seelig Professor of Philosophy, Boston College
Marriage, Health and the Professions, John Wall, Don Browning, William J. Doherty, and Stepher Post, eds., Eerdmans, 2002
"The book is addressed specifically to students and practitioners of five professions of law, medicine, ministry, therapy, and business but it may also be read profitably by anyone with a lively interest in marriage.” Library Journal
Paul Ricoeur and Contemoprary Moral Thought, John Wall, William Schweiker, and David Hall, eds. Routledge, 2002 and 2016
“[A]n impressive edition that contributes not only to our understanding of Ricoeur’s work but also to contemporary debates in normative philosophy.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion
Selected Articles and Chapters
2025. “Adultism, Normative Power, and Voting Age Discrimination,” in Aoife Daly, Pernilla Leviner, and Rebecca Thorburn Stern (eds.), Treated Like a Child – Age Discrimination and Children’s Rights (Brill, forthcoming).
2025. “Children’s Rights from a Childist Perspective: Theorizing Social Empowerment,” in Valeria Llobet, Didier Reynaert, Afua Twum-Danso Imoh, and Wouter Vandenhole (eds.), Towards a Field of Critical Children’s Rights Studies: A New Handbook (Routledge, forthcoming).
2025. Tanu Biswas and John Wall, “Childism for the Very Young,” in Sara Michael Luna, Brian L. Wright, and Marek Tesar (eds.), The Bloomsbury Handbook of Critical Perspectives in Early Childhood (Bloomsbury, forthcoming).
2024. "Infancismo y las Políticas de Empoderamiento Social" [“Childism and the Politics of Social Empowerment”], Sociedad e Infancias, 8(2), 205-213.
2023. “Childism: Transforming Critical Theory in Response to Children.” In Sarada Balagopalan, John Wall, and Karen Wells, eds., Bloomsbury Handbook of Theories in Childhood Studies (New York: Bloomsbury), 208-222.
2023. “The Legal Case for Children’s Right to Vote in the United States,” Sonja Grover, John Wall, and Robin Chen, International Journal of Children’s Rights 31:791-810.
2022. “The Case for Children’s Voting.” In Exploring Children’s Suffrage: Interdisciplinary Explorations in Ageless Voting, ed. John Wall (New York: Palgrave Macmillan).
2013. “Childism: The Challenge of Childhood to Ethics and the Humanities.” In Anna Mae Duane, ed., The Children’s Table: Childhood Studies and the New Humanities (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press), pp. 68-84.
2013. “All the World’s a Stage: Childhood and the Play of Being.” In Emily Ryall, Wendy Russell, and Malcolm MacLean, eds., The Philosophy of Play (New York: Routledge), pp. 32-43.
2010. “Childism and the Ethics of Responsibility.” In Annemie Dillen and Didier Pollefeyt, eds., Children’s Voices. Children’s Perspectives in Ethics, Theology, and Religious Education (Leuven, Belgium: BETL, Peeters-Publishing), pp. 237-265.
