How has youth been understood as a distinct identity, culture, and social category in the United States? How have youths and youth subcultures been represented in the media and what social and cultural meanings have been attributed to them? How have youths themselves experienced these circumstances, and responded to them? What roles have they played in their communities and in the broader society, and how have these roles evolved in relation to political, social, economic and technological transformations in the twentieth-century United States?
From the sensationalism around “flappers” and the new dances of the Jazz Age, to the congressional hearings on the dangers of rock ‘n’ roll and comic books of the 1950s, to the conservative backlash against campus radicalism and the hippy counterculture of the 1960s and 1970s, to the wars on drugs, gangs, and gangsta rap in the 1980s and 1990s, to the more recent reactions to the protests of millennials against sexism, gender discrimination and racism, young people and youth cultures have been key vectors for struggles over cultural values, national identity, gender and sexual norms, and racial and social inequalities. This course will explore this history of youth and youth cultures from both the top-down and the bottom-up, with careful attention to the diversity of experiences lived by the different kinds of youths that composed the younger generations from the 1930s to the 2010s.
- Enseignant: Andrew Diamond