Race and Identity: Coming of Age in 20th Century America

Catalog description

In this First-Year Seminar, we will use coming-of-age autobiographies to explore some of the most significant historical developments of the 20th century. By coming of age I mean autobiographies in which the author focuses primarily on the periods of childhood and adolescence into young adulthood. We will read books by people who lived during segregation in the South, the Great Depression, Japanese Internment during World War II, and the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. We will consider many issues, including: race, racism, immigration, religion, social class, and gender. We will contemplate questions about identity, family, honesty, and memory. As we read each book we will examine an individual life in a particular place and time, and we will move out beyond the confines of a person, family, or town to explore the broader historical moment in which the individual lived. To make this deeper contextualization possible, the course is divided into segments that will allow us to study the historical context of the autobiography as well as engage in focused discussion of the texts themselves.