NEWSLETTER
Society for the History of Children and Youth
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No. 11 |
Winter 2008 |
Harvey J. Graff ENG 7063.001 Seminar on Cultural Issues Growing Up in America: Historical, Comparative, and Cultural Perspectives Childhood and children, the young more generally, and their experiences of growing up reflect, r epresent, and exemplify their culture and society. Or so it has long been said. In behavior, in styles of rearing and raising, in expressions across the media and the plastic arts, modes and experiences of growing up—it has been urged repeatedly—provide special indicators and clues to the nature of a social or cultural realm, its values and priorities, its silences and contradictions. If this is true, "growing up" is a key topic for inquiry across the humanities, arts, and social sciences, and through time and space. Did childhood exist in the past, or is it a modern invention? Are childhood and adolescence, as we have known them, disappearing, as some claim? Are they biological or "natural" and universal stages of human development, or at least in part the products of society and culture and history? Do childhood and children have a future? How different from today was growing up in the past? How did the young mature in past times? What relationship to current patterns does that past have? How do the young of different class, gender, ethnic, and racial origins compare and contrast with each other? How have images, ideologies, appropriations, and representations of the young been used? These questions, resistant to easy answers, raise issues of context, materiality, textuality, temporality, and critical theories, and their intersections, relationships, and contradictions. They also ring out with problems for both reading and writing. This course asks a number of important questions about the changing experiences, expressions and representations, and meanings of growing up: childhood, adolescence, youth, "coming of age" in social and cultural historical context. In contrast to most contemporary views, it looks seriously at the past, at the history of growing up, as a comparison to the present and as the context from which today's patterns and problems develop. History provides a rich laboratory in which current notions about growing up--for example, from psychology, anthropology, sociology, human developmental studies, the arts and letters, and related areas--may be explored and tested. The relevance, usefulness, and accuracy of theories that relate to growing up will be examined in historical, comparative, and cultural contexts and probed over a broad expanse of time. Historical perspectives, this course presumes, have an importance in advancing our understanding of difficult, often highly emotional, and divisive issues that have not been considered sufficiently or seriously. A wide variety of sources, including films and novels, and a number of different research traditions and approaches constitute the course content. Cultural, social, and social policy criticism from a critical historical and cultural basis are also considered. A new, broad, rich, and interdisciplinary understanding of growing up and its contemporary and future challenges is the course goal. Objectives
Assignments & Evaluation d. Exploring growing up projects: 2 3-5 page papers. These mini-essays are a kind of think-piece or intellectual exercise in learning about sources and from critical, historical perspectives. e. Research proposal of 8-12 pages presenting a developed approach to an articulated research problem, question, or set of related questions in the interdisciplinary study of the young. Due at the end of the course (date to be announced). Assigned reading. A seminar is pointless, and painful, unless the participants have read the assigned material with care. I expect you to read all the material assigned for each week's discussion. Some of the books are out-of-print (not because they have lost their importance or value but because publishers now take books out of circulation very quickly). However, copies of all of them are on reserve in the library. So plan ahead. I encourage you to think about useful questions for discussion, or issues that occur to you after the seminar is over Leadership of one or more seminar sessions. One (or depending on the number of students in the class two) student is assigned to lead each seminar. The most important task of this assignment is to present questions and perspectives on the major topics and issues of that week, and on the reading specifically, that will generate good discussion. Think about how you will stimulate discussion. Questions and tasks should be made available to all seminar members prior to class, no later 2:00 p.m. on Tuesdays, via email or at the instructor’s office. Suggestions: choose particularly important passages in the works for analysis, photocopy them, and spend some time on their explication. (Better yet, distribute them in advance, along with discussion questions.) Choose key ideas and terms for elucidation, or focus on the questions the work asks, its answers, and its relation to larger issues or themes. Collect some reviews from academic journals and serious publications for nonspecialists and organize discussion around the assessment of these evaluations. Remember that the goal is not especially to find out what is wrong with the work, although that is important, but to understand its significance and contribution to larger issues and questions. Think of ways to identify themes and issues that include specific readings but may also look back to earlier weeks or look ahead to future weeks’ topics. Depending on class size, the plan for the session might include breaking into small groups with specific tasks for part of the time. Seminar leaders are not responsible for the entire session. Commentary papers. Students should write 6 2-page papers commenting on the week's reading. These papers should not summarize the book. Rather, they should present your reaction to the book: what that strikes you as particularly interesting, important, outrageous, thought-provoking or worth thinking or talking about. They should include questions the reading raises for you and/or questions you wish to raise about the reading. Those questions as well as your comments will help you to prepare for seminar sessions. I will make note of these papers, but I will not give them formal grades. They are very important. They propel you to think about the reading before you come to the seminar, and they give me a good idea of how you are reading the material and how you write. I expect one paper approximately every two weeks, starting with the second week’s reading assignment. These papers are due at the end of the session at which a book or articles are discussed. They are not acceptable later, and they are an integral part of the seminar. To receive credit for the seminar, you must turn them in on time. I may ask students with especially interesting papers to share with the whole seminar. Exploring growing up papers: 2 4-5 page papers. Everyone will write one “reading the sources” of growing up and one “probing myths, images, clichés, theories” of growing up paper. These mini-essays are intended as a kind of think-piece or intellectual exercise in learning about the critical evaluation and uses of sources, in the case of the first, and in learning from critical, historical perspectives more broadly, in the case of the second. More broadly, each mini-essay is an intellectual exercise in learning about growing up in a wider framework, including contemporary {or possible future) dimensions or aspects, by a careful use of historical approaches; historical evidence; research findings or complications; conclusions or interpretations; historical and other comparisons, historical perspectives or modes of understanding; and historical criticism. Each paper should be based at least in part if not entirely on required readings and relevant class discussions. The extensive bibliography that accompanies the syllabus will also be very useful in researching and drafting these exercises. Successful approaches to each assignment’s very general sets of relationships will define their specific tasks, including historical times, places, and persons, and their relationships as precisely as possible and set limits to the scope of the paper. Use footnotes or endnotes and other scholarly apparatus when appropriate or needed. Consider using one or both of the exploring growing up papers as ground work or testingyou’re your research proposals. 1) reading the sources of growing up--a brief essay critically evaluating a visual, literary, first-person, or cinematic source--selected from course materials--for its “usefulness” and value, and its limits and (possible) abuse as historical evidence about growing up. Use course reading and other materials, and bibliography for examples and uses by others. Discuss both usefulness and limits, with an eye to their connection, and, when possible, aim at a balanced conclusion. Consider issues of context, text and textuality, representativeness and representation, relationship to critical and other theories, and place in different modes of analysis and interpretation. Be specific. Due on Week 7. 2) probing myths, images, clichés, theories of growing up in historical and cultural contexts—a brief essay testing or evaluating a common idea, notion, understanding, theory, or myth about relevant dimensions or aspects of growing up. Studies and conceptions of children/childhood, adolescents/adolescence, and youth—“growing up”—past and present are littered with myths, images, clichés, theories. Although they are often only incompletely or partly erroneous or wrong, they can and do real damage, sometimes to real human beings, but also in the ways that notions about the past shape in various ways our understandings of the present. There are, for example, myths of the past as a “golden age” for the young but also the view that “the history of childhood is a nightmare from which we have only recently begun to awaken,” as psychohistorian Lloyd DeMause notoriously put it. Philippe Ariès posed the question: when did idea /ideal of modern children emerge. If historians responded with criticism or skepticism, others added a superficial notion of Ariès as undergirding to their theories, from psychology to literary history and art history. The relationship of the young and their families to work, for instance, constitutes another arena full of images, errors, part-truths, and myth that can be contradicted by historical research. Identity and design a critical test or evaluation of a particular myth, image, or theory about growing up. Use course materials to help your selection and in conducting your critique. Consider the implications of your conclusions for studies and interpretations. Due on Week 10. Research proposal The final written assignment for this course is a formal proposal for a research project (8-12 pages). It is due at the end of the semester (date to be announced later). In the context of this seminar, research proposals will define a research problem, a question, or a set of related questions in the interdisciplinary study of the young, drawing on primary and secondary materials from more than one discipline or genre, and using, at least in part, a historical and perhaps also a comparative perspective. Defining that perspective is part of the assignment’s challenge. Topics should fall within the general scope (broadly defined) of “growing up in America in historical, cultural, and comparative perspective.” A more detailed set of instructions will be provided. Due on Week 14 or 15. Turning in assignments Civility Academic Honesty Disabilities Services Department of History information Books ordered for bookstores (all paperbound): Note where there is a choice of books Harvey J. Graff, ed., Growing Up in America: Historical Experiences. Wayne State University Press, 1987 (used copies) Recommended: "Primary": Choose one of each grouping: Edward Eggleston, The Hoosier Schoolmaster. Indiana U.P., 1984 Richard Wright, Black Boy. Perennial Classic, 1966 Alix Kates Shulman, Memoirs of an Ex-Prom Queen. Bantam, 1973 *=Library Reserve Note: suggestions for further reading listed at end of syllabus. Week 1. (8/27) Introduction: Questions, Issues, Approaches Optional: Film: "Lord of the Flies" (90) Week 2. (9/3) "Great Debates" I *Philippe Ariès, Centuries of Childhood: A Social History of Family Life. Vintage, 1962 (1960), Part I, esp. chs. I,II,III,V, conclusion; Part II conclusions; skim Part III, pps. 15-61, 100- 135, 329-336, 398-407, 411-415 Film: "The Return of Martin Guerre" (123) Week 3. (9/10) "Great Debates" II Linda Pollock, Forgotten Children: Parent-Child Relations from 1500 to 1900. Cambridge, 1983, chs. 1,2,7, skim other chapters of interest Film: "The Wild Child" (85) Week 4. (9/17) Seventeenth and Eighteenth-Century: Beginnings of Growing Up in America; Change and Continuity; Variations on Themes/Eighteenth-Century: Transitions; Rebellions All Over the Land GUA, 5-10[Demos, Beales,Walsh, D.B. Smith, Greven, D.S. Smith] Week 5. (9/24) Diversity and Early Transformations: Commercialization, Migration, Urbanization. Family Change and Growing Up Change, c. 1780s-1840s GUA, 11-17, skip 15 [Kett, Cott, Webber, Smith Rosenberg, Katz-Davey, Stansell][two weeks] Choose one of Films from the American Social History Project (25 each): “Daughters of Free Men,” “The Five Points,” "Doing All They Can” Week 6. (10/1) Early Modernity: Remaking Growing Up in Nineteenth-Century GUA, 11-17, skip 15 [Kett, Cott, Webber, Smith Rosenberg, Katz-Davey, Stansell][two weeks] optional: Harvey J. Graff, Conflicting Paths: Growing Up in America. Harvard, 1995 Film (optional): "The Molders of Troy" (1990) Week 7. (10/8) Slouching toward Modern Ways: Contradictions, Change and Continuity in the Transformations toward Modern Paths of Growing Up/The Incomplete Revolution Among the Young: Policy, Institutions, the State, Families, and Gender GUA, 18-21 [Modell et al, Brenzel, West, Bodnar] Choose one of Slides from Canada's Visual History series first essays due Week 8. (10/15) Turning the Century: A Progressive Synthesis? Reforming the Young Joe Austin and Michael Nevin Willard, eds., Generations of Youth: Youth Cultures and History inTwentieth-Century America [A&W] (NYU Press, 1998), 1, 2, 3, 4 [Getis, Mechling, Odem, Bloom] Anzia Yezierska, The Bread Givers. Persea, 1975 [1925] Film: "My Brilliant Career" (101) Week 9. (10/22) Twentieth-Century Transitions I c. 1900s-1940s A&W,5, 6, 7 [Scheiner, Fass, Espana-Maram] Choose one of Optional: *Antonia Casteneda, “Language and Other Lethal Weapons: Cultural Politics and the Rites of Children as Translators of Culture,” in Mapping Multiculturalism, ed. Avery F. Gordon and Christopher Newfield (Minnesota, 1996), 201-214 Film: "Rebel Without a Cause" (111) Week 10. (10/29) Twentieth-Century Transitions II c. 1940s-1960s A&W, Part II, 8-13 [Kelley, garcia, Sears, Bailey, Chavez, Rangel] select J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye. 1951 Film: "High School" (75) Second essay due Week 11. (11/5) Boom! Boom! Baby Boomers! Radical Youth, Conformist Youth A&W, Select from Part III, 14-26[Austin, Moore, Gaunt, Walser, Wei, Willard, Willis, Roediger, Addison, Buff, Lipsitz, Bright, Duncombe][for two weeks]
Optional: *Antonia Casteneda, “Language and Other Lethal Weapons: Cultural Politics and the Rites of Children as Translators of Culture,” in Mapping Multiculturalism, ed. Avery F. Gordon and Christopher Newfield (Minnesota, 1996), 201-214 Film: "Street Wise" (92) & “Dirty Laundry” (15) Week 12. (11/12) All Fall Down? The Rise and Fall of the Cult of Childhood and Adolescence/ Yesterday, Today,Tomorrow? Is There a Future for Growing Up in the Age of "the childlike adult and the adultlike child"? A&W, Select from Part III, 14-26[Austin, Moore, Gaunt, Walser, Wei, Willard, Willis, Roediger, Addison, Buff, Lipsitz, Bright, Duncombe][for two weeks] Film: "Heathers" (102) Weeks 13 & 14 (11/19 & 11/26) Week 15 (12/3) class meets at the Graffs Film: “Switchblade Sisters” (90) Third essay due 11/26 or 12/3
Growing Up in America Research Proposals The final written assignment for this course is a formal proposal for a research project. It is due at the end of the semester (date to be announced later). In the context of this seminar, research proposals will define a research problem, a question, or a set of related questions in the interdisciplinary study of the young, drawing on primary and secondary materials from more than one discipline or genre, and using, at least in part, a historical and perhaps also a comparative perspective. Defining that perspective is part of the assignment’s challenge. Proposals should be no longer than 10-12 double-spaced, typewritten pages, and no shorter than about 8 pages. Use font size 12. Your topic should fall within the general scope (broadly defined) of “growing up in America in historical and comparative perspective.” Use the relevant readings to help you in determining that. Use course materials when they are relevant; you should not be starting from scratch. Although you may not actually conduct all the research you propose, draft the paper, or otherwise complete the project, preparing a formal research proposal still provides a valuable experience in your academic training, one useful and applicable to many other scholastic or nonacademic tasks. For this assignment, you will propose formally the research for a seminar or qualifying paper or a scholarly article of, say, 25-30 pages. Proposals take a variety of general forms, formats, and organizations. Nevertheless, all research proposals address these key concerns, and for this course, must also include an explicitly historical perspective: 1) define the research topic, problem(s), and questions. 2) discuss briefly the intellectual context of the subject or background to the research proposed--often in the form of a "literature search" and/or a comment on previous studies and approaches to the subject. 3) explain your own distinctive approach or research strategy, with specific attention to your assumptions and use of certain theoretical and critical approaches, your question(s) and/or hypothesis(es), the ways in which your research can be distinguished from that of other researchers. 4) describe and justify the nature of the historical, cultural, and comparative perspective(s) and/or approach taken or developed. This includes discussing the “how” of how you plan to conduct your research, analysis, and interpretation as well as the “why” of why you are using a historical, cultural, or comparative approach. Use course readings as relevant or appropriate in identifying and constructing your approach. Indicate how that perspective or dimension will make your study different from other approaches and the advantages (and also complications, perhaps) from taking historical and comparative approaches. 6) identify, describe, and justifying the methods you expect to employ to probe those sources, including but not limited to historical and comparative methods. 7) identify the anticipated results or outcome (say, on the one hand, what you hope to learn and the contribution you might make, and, on the other hand, the kind of paper or project you might use to present the results to a larger audience, including, for example, a Ph.D. supervising committee}. The proposal should include a bibliography of both primary and secondary sources. This will help to establish the practicability or do-ability of your project. It also contributes to the legitimation of your proposal. Present the bibliography in proper and full bibliographic form, divided (in terms of the usual definitions) into primary and secondary works. Identify library or archival locations. With the help of UTSA and other reference librarians, use card and electronic catalogues, print and electronic databases and bibliographies. When relevant, explore the usefulness of specific nonprint sources. Use course readings and bibliographies as points of origin and landmarks. If the relevance and usefulness of a specific item is not readily apparent, indicate in a few words what you take to be its usefulness. In other words, avoid any signs of padding. As you conduct your own research, be alert for items that might be useful to your colleagues in the class. That, too, is an important part of academic labor. The instructor, within the limits of his knowledge and imagination, should be considered one of your resources; so are your other professors and your peers in the program. We will discuss your work on proposals, as possible, in class and provide some time for progress reports and raising general questions. Note: All written work for this course should be conducted with gender-neutral, nonsexist language and rhetorical constructions. It is my strong preference that class discussion and oral reports are also gender-neutral and nonsexist. This is part of a seminar situation in which full respect and opportunity are accorded by and to all participants. The collegial relationships begun in the classroom should accompany our relevant relationships with each other elsewhere as well. Written work should be turned in without cover pages or special folders. Simply put your name and course identification on the top of the first page and staple in upper left corner. If you use a dot-matrix printer, please ensure that the ribbon is new and of good quality; papers with faint or blurry print will not be read. You may use any system for annotation, foot- or endnotes, bibliography, and the like, that you know or prefer, provided that it is one accepted within the disciplines of the social sciences and humanities, and that you use it correctly and consistently. Most common, of course, are University of Chicago/Turabian and MLA. Various style sheets and guidebooks are sold in the campus bookstore and most other bookstores. No written work will be accepted late unless very unusual circumstances arise or permission is granted in advance of the time the paper is due. Suggestions for Further Reading © Society for the History of Children and Youth, 2008 |