Style and Identity in Youth Cultures
ANTH 290
Fall 2011 not offered
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| Crosslisting:
AMST 290 |
This course focuses on young people's engagements with commercially provided culture and their implications for identity formation. We begin in the postwar U.S., when producers of symbolic goods, such as movies, music, and clothes, began aggressively tailoring products for young people; over the rest of the 20th century and into the 21st, new youth-oriented cultural commodities and sites of consumption have been used by young people in diverse ways to define themselves in relationships to adult society and to other young people. We will examine young people's intensifying involvement with the cultural market, with attention to both the diversity of youth-cultural formations that have emerged within the United States and to the global circulation of Euro-American youth culture. Using case studies, we will consider the ways in which young people's consumption practices have both reinforced and transgressed intersecting boundaries of class, race, gender, and nationality. An overarching concern in the course will be to assess whether or to what extent particular cultural practices may help prepare young people for positions of privilege, reconcile them to structural disadvantages, or provide them with resources to challenge the dominant society. |
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Essential Capabilities:
Intercultural Literacy, Interpretation
This course focuses on the ways in which young people use symbolic goods, such as clothes, music, movies) in fashioning identities.
While the course focuses on the U.S., it has a comparative dimension that reflects the globalization of youth culture; we will look at the ways in which globally circulating cultural forms are adapted to particular local contexts.
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| Credit: 1 |
Gen Ed Area Dept:
SBS ANTH |
| Course Format: Lecture / Discussion | Grading Mode: Graded |
| Level: UGRD |
Prerequisites: None |
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Fulfills a Requirement for: (AMST)(ANTH)(EDST)(STS) |
Major Readings:
Amy Best, FAST CARS, COOL RIDES
Amy Wilkins, WANNABES, GOTHS, and CHRISTIANS: THE BOUNDARIES OF SEX, STYLE, AND STATUS
Mark Liechty, SUITABLY MODERN: MAKING MIDDLE-CLASS CULTURE IN A NEW CONSUMER SOCIETY
Other authors we will read include Angie Bexley, Michael Dyson, Simon Frith, Donna Gaines, Henry Jenkins, Richard Johnson, George Lipsitz, Angela McRobbie, Bill Osgerby, Grace Palladino, Hilary Pilkington, Tricia Rose, Sarah Thornton.
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Examinations and Assignments:
2 short (3-5 page) papers on assigned topics; final paper on student-selected topic |
Additional Requirements and/or Comments:
Regular class attendance is expected. |
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