Spring 2012
ANT 770: Anthropology of Youth
Mondays 1-3:30pm
Instructor: Kristin Monroe
Historically, anthropology’s interest in children and youth focused on cultural development—the ways in which culture is transmitted to younger people— and thus attended mainly to rites of passage, the development of gender roles, liminality, and, in general, the transition from childhood into adulthood. More recently, anthropologists have begun to consider more closely the perspectives of youth and the specific challenges they face. Conceiving of young people as cultural agents, rather than as ‘recipients’ of culture, cultural anthropologists in recent decades have looked closely at their lives and experiences. This course delves into both the historical and recent anthropological literature on youth, as well as critical social theory, in order to demonstrate the diverse approaches one can take in studying and representing youth as well as the unique methodological issues raised by undertaking research with this social group. We will consider recent ethnographic recent work about children and youth in relation to a range of topics including media and consumption, language, music, style, human rights, race and ethnicity, and queer studies.
