W&L’s Leticia Fernández-Fontecha Publishes New Book The visiting assistant professor of history explores the history of children’s pain in relation to social and medical perception.

By Lily Caldwell
March 19, 2025

Leticia Fernández-Fontecha, visiting assistant professor of history at Washington and Lee University, recently published a book through the Cambridge University Press, titled “Childhood, Pain and Emotion: A Modern British Medical History.”

Fernández-Fontecha’s book examines the cultural understandings of children’s pain from the 1870s to the end of World War II. Fernández-Fontecha focuses on the experience of pain, looking at how pain is felt and seen in different contexts including the hospital, war nursery and asylum. The book additionally views childhood pain through the lenses of different disciplines such as physiology and psychology, analyzing the evolution of the social and medical perception of children in pain. Through her research, Fernández-Fontecha contributes to the understanding of the experience of pain and the historical construction of childhood.

“On a personal level, this book is deeply meaningful to me,” said Fernández-Fontecha. “My interest in childhood pain began when I was a student working in Cambodia with children who had experienced abuse. Seeing this book come to light is particularly gratifying because I believe this is a critical conversation we need to have as a society: How do we recognize and respond to children’s pain? How do we engage with those who lack verbal dexterity or cultural visibility, as is often the case with children? I am grateful that this book now exists in the world and hopeful that it will serve as a foundation for further exploration of these questions in my future work.”

Fernández-Fontecha is in her first year as a visiting member of the W&L faculty. She previously worked at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill as a teaching assistant professor of Spanish. She earned a Bachelor of Arts in art history from Complutense University of Madrid, a Master of Arts in contemporary art and visual culture from the Autonomous University of Madrid, a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing from the University of Iowa and a Ph.D. in history from the University of Greenwich.

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