Did childhood exist in the past, or is it a modern invention? Are childhood (and children) and adolescence (and adolescents), as we have known them, and as some claim, disappearing? Are they biological or "natural" and universal stages of human development, or at least in part the products of society and culture and history) Do childhood and children have a future? How different from today was growing up in the past' How did the young mature in past times, and what relationships to current patterns does that past have?

This course asks a number of important questions about the changing experiences and meanings of growing up--childhood, adolescence, youth, "coming of age." In contrast to most contemporary views, it looks seriously at the past, at the history of growing up, as a comparison to the present and as the specific context from which today's patterns and problems developed. History thus provides a rich laboratory in which current notions about growing up--for example, from psychology, anthropology, sociology, human developmental studies, and related areas--may be explored and tested. The relevance, usefulness, and accuracy of theories that relate to growing up will be examined in historical context and probed over a broad expanse of time.

A wide variety of evidence, including films and novels and memoirs, and a number of different research traditions and approaches are considered. In addition, we will evaluate family, child, and youth policy as it has developed over time, and its functions today, and as it provides options for tomorrow. A new, broad, rich, and interdisciplinary understanding of growing up and its
challenges is the course goal.

Requirements:

1. Regular attendance, preparation, and participation.
2. 3 1-2-page "reaction\evaluation" papers at regular intervals during the semester, each 3-4 weeks, responding to required reading, films, etc. Due: first week in September, October, and November
3. Participation in a group research project and brief class oral presentation: giving historical, theoretical, and policy context and perspective to a contemporary question or problem; presentations during final 3-4 weeks of course.
4. 10-page paper: using course ideas and materials to interpret primary sources on growing up, selected from either materials on students' own families (with source materials including at least 2-3 generations), or from Eve Merriam, ed., Growing Up Female in America: Ten Lives; Chris Mayfield, ed., Growing Up Southern; Hamilton Halt, ed., The Life Stories Of Undistinguished Americans as Told by Themselves; Mary Frosch, ed., Coming of Age in America; or Harold Augenbraum and Ilan Stavans, eds., Growing Up Latino (detailed information provided in class) Due at final class meeting.

Books Ordered for University Bookstore (all paperbound):

Note when there is a choice of books

Harvey J. Graff, ed., Growing Up in America: Historical Experiences.
    Wayne State University Press, 1987
J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye. [1951]
Sandra Cisneros, The House on Mango Street. Vintage, 1991 [1984]
W. Norton Grubb and Marvin Lazerson. Broken Promises: How Americans Fail
    Their Children Univ. of Chicago Press. 1988 [1982]
 

Frederick Douglass. Narrative of the Life. .. an American Slave. New American
    Library, 1968 [1845] OR
Lucy Larcom, A New England Girlhood. Northeastern U.P., 1986 [1889]

Edward Eggleston, The Hoosier Schoolmaster. Indiana U.P., 1984 [1871] OR
Stephen Crane, Maggie. A Girl of the Streets Fawcett, 1960 [1893]

Anzia Yezierska, The Bread Givers. Persea, 1975 [1925] OR
Kate Simon, Bronx Primitive. Harper and Row. 1982

Richard Wright. Black Boy. Perennial Classic, 1966 [1931] OR
E.L. Doctorow, World's Fair. Random House, 1985

Optional, for essays (choose one):

Eve Merriam, ed., Growing Up in Female in America: Ten Lives. Beacon, 1987 [1971]
Chris Mayfield, ed., Growing Up Southern: Southern Exposure Looks at Childhood
    Then and Now. Pantheon. 1981 [This book is out of print; copies are available at used
    book stores]
Hamilton Heft, ed., The Life Stories of Undistinguished Americans as Told by
    Themselves, ed. Werner Sellers. Routledge, 1990 [1906]
Mary Frosch, ed., Coming of Age in America: A Multicultural Anthology. New Press, 1994
Harold Augenbraum and Ilan Stavans, eds., Growing Up Latino: Memoirs and
    Stories. Houghton Mifflin. 1993

Optional, recommended but not required:

Harvey J. Graff, Conflicting Paths: Growing Up in America (Harvard U.P., 1995)

    Reading: Graff, ed., Growing Up in America [GUA], Part I  readings, 1-4
    Film: "Lard of the Flies" (90)

Week 2. (8/31) European Traditions, American Origins: Early Paths of Growing Up

    Reading: Keith Thomas, "Children in Early Modern England." in Children and Their Books,
    ed. Gillian Avery and Julia Briggs (Oxford Univ. Press, 1989), 45-77 [library reserve]
    Film: "The Return of Martin Guerre" (111)

Week 3. (9/14) Seventeenth-Century Beginnings of Growing Up in America: Change and Continuity, Variations on Themes

    Reading: GUA, 5, 6, 7

Week 4. (9/21) Eighteenth-Century Transitions: Rebellions Over the Land

    Reading: GUA. 8.9.10
    Film: "The Wild Child" (85)

Week 5. (9/28) Diversity and Early Transformations: Commercialization Migration, Urbanization. Family Change and Growing Up Change, c. 1780s-1840s

    Reading: GUA. 11, 12, 13; and choose from:
        Frederick Douglass, Autobiography or Lucy Larcom, A New England Girlhood
    Films from the American Social History Project:
        "Daughters of Free Men." "The Five Points." "Doing All They Can" (75)

Week 6. (10/5) Early Modernity: Remaking Growing Up in Nineteenth-Century America

    Reading: GUA, 14, 15, 16, 17:
        Douglass and/or Larcom
    Film: "The Molders of Troy" (90)

Week 7. (10/12) Slouching toward the Modern Ways: Contradictions and Irregularity in the Transformations toward Modern Paths of Growing Up. Race, Sex/Gender, Social Class, Ethnicity, Geography

    Reading:
        Edward Eggleston, The Hoosier Schoolmaster OR Stephen Crane, Maggie, Girl of the Streets
    Slides from Canada's Visual Past series

Week 8. (10/19) Change and Continuity: The Incomplete Revolution Among the Young. Policy, Institutions, the State, and the Family

    Reading: GUA, 18-24 [for two weeks]

Week 9. (10/26) Turning the Century: A Progressive Synthesis? Reforming the Young (Again?)

    Reading: GUA, 18-24 [for two weeks]
        Anzia Yezierska, The Bread Givers OR Kate Simon, Bronx Primitive
    Film: "My Brilliant Career" (101)

Week 10. (11/2) Twentieth-Century Transitions I c. 1900s-1940s

    Reading: GUA, 25-31 [for next two weeks] and choose:
        Richard Wright, Black Boy OR E.L. Doctorow, World's Fair
    Film: "Rebel Without a Cause" (111)

Week 11. (11/9) Twentieth-Century Transitions II c. 1940s-1950s

    Reading: GUA, 25-31 [two weeks]
        J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye
    Film: "High School" (75)

Week 12. (11/16) Beam! Boom! Baby Boomers! Radical Youth, Conformist Youth

    Film: "Street Wise" (92)
    Reading: Sandra Cisneros, The House on Mango Street
    Optional: Vicki Ruiz, "'Star Struck': Acculturation, Adoles- cence, and the Mexican
        American Woman, 1920-1950." in Building with Our Own Hands: New Directions in Chicana
        Studies. ed. Adela de la Torre and Beatriz M. Pesquera (University Of California Press,
        1993), 109-129, and "Oral History and La Mujer: The Rose Gerrero Story." in Women on
        the U.S.-Mexico Border: Responses to Change, ed. Ruiz and Susan Tiano (Allen & Unwin,
        1987), 219-231 [Library Reserve]

Week 13. (11/23) All Fall Down? The Rise and Fall of the Cult of Childhood and Adolescence

    Reading: GUA, 31-33

Week 14. (11/30)  Today?/Tomorrow? Is There a Future for Growing Up in the Age of "the childlike adult and the adultlike child"? Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow

    Reading: W. Norton Grubb and Marvin Lazerson, Broken Promises: How Americans Fail
        Their Children, esp. Part I
    Optional: Andrew J. Cherlin, ed., The Changing American Family and Public Policy (Urban
        Institute, 1988) [Library reserve]
    Film: "Heathers" (102)