Growing Up in America: 1607 - 2000

Catalog description

Children have been growing up in the United States since it was declared independent, in 1776, but how adults conceive of (and therefore legislate and interpret) children and childhood constantly changes to fit current circumstances. The experiences of children themselves have varied not only in terms of race, class, gender, and religion but also depending on specific events (i.e., coming of age during the Civil War versus the Civil Rights movement) or geography (i.e., growing up in rural Hawaii vs. urban New Jersey). We cannot cover all of those histories in one course, so this seminar course instead focuses on exploring the interplay of ideas about children and the expressed or historical experiences of children. When the puritans and plantations members (slave, bonded and free) came to the Atlantic shore, they brought with them particular ideas about what is meant to be a child, and to experience childhood. They encountered already established residents who also had ideas about childhood. How did those concepts adjust/meld/contrast over time, and how do we see those ideas reflected or reshaped by actual experiences? This course engages particular lines of inquiry: How and why do understanding about what is "natural" for children change over time? How do variables like race, class, gender, etc., uphold effects the manifesting of such concepts? What is the role of the state in children's lives and how has that changed over time? What is the impact of mass culture on modern childhood? Counts as a CAS Global & Cultural Diversity course. Counts as a Communication Intensive course. Counts as a Human Diversity & Commonality course.