Growing Up Modern

Catalog description

Childhood and adolescence are modern inventions. Building upon this fact, students explore how the literature of the past two centuries has depicted childhood, adolescence, and early adulthood. Among the questions asked in the course are: What trials do children and adolescents endure on their way to adulthood? How do children, teens, and young adults respond to authority? How do unusual people (such as disabled youths) challenge definitions of normality? Is coming of age the same across different cultures? How has the conception of childhood, adolescence and maturation changed in the past two hundred years?