Re-remembering Stories of Growing Up
EDST 327
Spring 2024 not offered
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Over the past century, conceptions and expectations of youthful persons have shifted tremendously. The collective social assumption that one can simply point to a young person's age and declare said person to be "child" or "youth" or "young adult" is evident in myriad legal, social, cultural, and affective markers which often presuppose who, what, and where one is supposed to be based solely on one's age. However, such timed anticipations of youthful bodies are experienced in particular ways and at varying speeds based on one's race, sexuality, gender, class, nationality, and ability. That is, young people are never quite who, what, or where social structures assert they are supposed to be--physically, mentally, or otherwise.
This course will explore the imaginations, constructions, frustrations, and exhilarations of the process of "growing up." Pulling on various contributions to the field of childhood and youth studies, alongside queer theories, gender and sexuality studies, critical theories of race, and curriculum theory, this course will critically analyze how the timed processes of leaving childhood and reaching adulthood--including the mucky intermediary waters of adolescence--are contingent, contextual, syncopated, relational, and always in flux. This course will use memoirs and stories about growing up as analytical tools to examine the various directions that the road from child to adult can take. Utilizing various critical academic traditions, emphasis will be placed on the importance of storytelling, narrative, and voice and how they can help elucidate the contours and ruptures and the limits and horizons of ways people experience the processes of "growing up" in whatever direction that growth may take them. |
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| Credit: 1 |
Gen Ed Area Dept:
SBS EDST |
| Course Format: Seminar | Grading Mode: Graded |
| Level: UGRD |
Prerequisites: None |
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Fulfills a Major Requirement for: (EDST-MN)(EDST) |
Major Readings:
Sample Readings:
-Madden: Long Live the Tribe of the Fatherless Girls
-Gonsalez: Pedros Theory: Reimagining the Promised Land
-Whitehead: Jonny Appleseed
-Thom: Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars: A Dangerous Trans Girls Confabulous Memoir
-Lesko and Talburt: Keywords in Youth Studies: Tracing Affects, Movements, Knowledges
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Examinations and Assignments:
Students will be evaluated on the following:
-Weekly class participation and discussion
-Midterm discussion exam
-Writing workshops throughout the semester
-Class discussion facilitation
-Memoir writing: Two memoir fragments due during the semester and Final Critical Memoir with Authors Note |
Additional Requirements and/or Comments:
For admission, please (1) place an electronic POI request during pre-registration and (2) email sstiegler@wesleyan.edu to obtain the questionnaire which will be the basis for selection. Those admitted will be able to enroll during the adjustment period. This course satisfies the Category 1 requirement for the EDST major and minor. |
| Drop/Add Enrollment Requests | | | | | |
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