Did childhood exist in the past, or is it a modern invention? Are childhood and adolescence, 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 social and cultural historical context. 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 provides a rich laboratory in which current notions about growing up--for example, from psychology, anthropology, sociology, human developmental studies, the arts and letters, 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. The humanities, this course presumes, have an import in advancing our understanding of difficult, often highly emotional issues than has not been considered sufficiently or seriously.

A wide variety of evidence, including films and novels, and a number of different research traditions and approaches constitute the course content. Social and social policy criticism from a critical historical basis are also considered. A new, broad, rich, and interdisciplinary understanding of growing up and its contemporary and future challenges is the course goal.
 

Requirements & Evaluation:

2. informal oral reports on assigned and/or library materials (approx. 15% of
final grade). Length and number will depend on the size of the class

3. a brief essay (3-5 pages) critically evaluating a visual or a literary source--selected from course materials--for its historical usefulness (approx. 20% of final grade). Due at the mid-point of the course: Week 7, at class time

4. critical essay and/or primary source-based research paper (15-20 pages): topics and length determined in consultation with the instructor (approx. 40 % of final grade). Due at time of final class, Week 14.

To receive support services, students with disabilities must register with the Office of Disability Services (MS 2.03.18; 458-4157-voice; 458-4981-TTY)

Scholastic honesty is expected and required. Information on scholastic dishonesty, including plagiarism, is provided in the Student Handbook. See also the statement in the UTSA Graduate Catalog. When in doubt, consult the instructor.

Books ordered for bookstores (all paperbound): ADD NEW

    Note where there is a choice of books

Harvey J. Graff, ed., Growing Up in America: Historical Experiences.   Wayne State University Press, 1987

Linda Pollock, Forgotten Children: Parent-Child Relations from 1500 to 1900. Cambridge U.P., 1983

Mary P. Ryan, Cradle of the Middle Class. Cambridge U.P., 1980

Anzia Yezierska, The Bread Givers. Persea, 1975 [1925]

J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye. [1951]

W. Norton Grubb and Marvin Lazerson, Broken Promises: How Americans Fail Their Children. Univ. of Chicago Press, 1988 [1982]

Recommended:

Philippe Aries, Centuries of Childhood: A Social History of Family Life. Vintage, 1962

Joe Austin and Michael Nevin Willard, eds., Generations of Youth . . . Twentieth Century America. New York Univ. Press, 1998

Sandra Cisneros, The House on Mango Street. Vintage, 1991 [1984]

Todd Gitlin, The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage. Bantam, 1987

Harvey J. Graff, Conflicting Paths: Growing Up in America. Harvard UP, 1995

"Primary": Choose one of each pair.

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]

Richard Wright, Black Boy. Perennial Classic, 1966 [1937] OR  E.L. Doctorow, World's Fair. Random House, 1985

Alix Kates Shulman, Memoirs of an Ex-Prom Queen. Bantam, 1973; OR  Claude Brown, The Children of Ham. Stein and Day, 1976
 

Week 1. (1/25) Introduction: Questions, Issues, Approaches

Harvey J. Graff, ed., Growing Up in America: Historical Experiences [GUA]. Wayne State UP, 1987, Part I, readings 1-4

Graff, Conflicting Paths: Growing Up in America. Harvard UP, 1995, Preface & Introduction

Film: "Lord of the Flies" (90)
 

Week 2. (2/1) "Great Debates" I

*Philippe Aries, Centuries of Childhood: A Social History of Family

Life. Vintage, 1962 (1960), Part I, esp. chs. I,II,III,V, conclusion; Part II conclusions; skim Part III, pps. 15-61, 100-135, 329-336, 398-407, 411-415

*Adrian Wilson, "The Infancy of the History of Childhood: An Appraisal of Philippe Aries," History & Theory, 19 (1980), 132-153

*Richard T. Vann, "The Youth of Centuries of Childhood," History & Theory, 21 (1982), 279-297

*Keith Thomas, "Children in Early Modern England," in Children and their Books, ed. Gillian Avery and Julia Briggs (Oxford UP, 1989), 45-77

Optional:*Anthony Burton, "Looking forward from Aries: Pictorial and material evidence for the history of childhood and family life," Continuity and Change, 4 (1989), 203-230

*Ludmilla Jordanova, "Conceptualizing Childhood in the Eighteenth Century: The Problem of Child Labour," British Journal of Eighteenth-Century Studies, 10 (1987), 189-199, and "Children in History: Concepts of Nature and Society," in Children, Parents, and Politics, ed. Geoffrey Scarre (Cambridge UP, 1989), 3-24

Michael Mitterauer, A History of Youth (Blackwell, 1992 [1986])

Film: "The Return of Martin Guerre" (111)

Week 3. (2/8) "Great Debates" II

Linda Pollock, Forgotten Children: Parent-Child Relations from 1500 to 1900. Cambridge, 1983, chs. 1,2,7, skim rest of book

Reports: "Traditions"

Lawrence Stone, The Family, Sex and Marriage in England. Harper and Row, 1977

Lloyd DeMause, "The Evolution of Childhood," The History of Childhood, ed. DeMause (Psychohistory Press, 1974), 1-74

Barbara Hanawalt, Growing Up in Medieval London. Oxford UP, 1993

Michael Mitterauer, A History of Youth. Blackwell, 1993 (1986)

Edward Shorter, The Making of the Modern Family. Basic Books, 1975

David Hunt, Parents and Children in History. Basic, 1970

Louise Tilly and Joan Scott, Women, Work and Family. Holt, Rinehart, 1978

Hugh Cunningham, The Children of the Poor. Blackwell, 1991

Philip Greven, Jr., The Protestant Temperament. Knopf, 1977

John Demos, Past, Present, and Personal. Oxford, 1986

Carl Degler, At Oddds: Women and the Family from the Revolution. . . . Oxford, 1980

Week 4. (2/15) Seventeenth and Eighteenth-Century Beginnings of Growing Up in America: Change and Continuity, Variations on

Themes/Eighteenth-Century Transitions: Rebellions Over the Land

GUA, 5-10, and select from:

*Natalie Zemon Davis, "The Reasons of Misrule: Youth Groups and Charivaris in Sixteenth-Century France," Past & Present, 50 (1971), 41-75

*J. H. Plumb, "The New World of Children in Eighteenth-Century England," Past and Present, 67 (1975), 64-95

*Margaret J.M. Ezell, "John Locke's Images of Childhood," Eighteenth Century Studies, 17 (1983/84), 139-155

*Linda K. Kerber, "Daughters of Columbia: Educating Women for the Republic, 1787-1805," in The Hofstadter Aegis, ed. Stanley Elkins and Eric McKitterick (Knopf, 1974). 36-59

*Jacqueline S. Reinier, "Rearing the Republican Child: Attitudes and Practice in Post-Revolutionary Philadelphia," William and Mary Quarterly, 39 (1982), 150-163

Reports: Edmund Morgan, The Puritan Family. Harper and Row, 1965 (1940)

Barry Levy, Quakers and the American Family. Oxford, 1988

Philip Greven, Jr., Protestant Temperament

Greven, Four Generations. Cornell, 1970

Daniel Vickers, Farmers and Fishermen. North Carolina, 1994

Glenn Wallach, Obedient Sons. Massachusetts, 1997  

children in Southern colonies [citations on request]

Film: "The Wild Child" (85)

Week 5. (2/22) Diversity and Early Transformations: Commercialization, Migration, Urbanization. Family Change and Growing Up Change, c. 1780s-1840s

GUA, 11-17 (skip 15)

"Primary", choose from:

Frederick Douglass, Autobiography. New American Library, 1968 [1845] or Lucy Larcom, A New England Girlhood. Northeastern UP, 1986 [1889]

Report: Wilma King, Stolen Childhood: Slave Youth. Indiana UP, 1995

Films from the American Social History Project (75):

Daughters of Free Men," "The Five Points," "Doing All They Can";

Week 6. (3/1) Early Modernity: Remaking Growing Up in Nineteenth-Century America. A Case Study

Mary P. Ryan, Cradle of the Middle Class. Cambridge, 1980

Reports: [citations on macsulinity and femininity upon request]

Joseph Kett, Rites of Passage: Adolescence in America, 1790 to the Present. Basic, 1977

John Gillis, Youth and History. Academic Press, 1981

John Springhall, Coming of Age: Adolescence in Britain. Gill and Macmillan, 1986

Harry Hendrick, Images of Youth . . . 1880-1920. Oxford UP, 1990

Christie Anne Farnum, The Education of the Southern Belle. NYU Press, 1994

E. Anthony Rotundo, American Manhood. Basic, 1993

Christine Stansell, City of Women. Knopf, 1986

Susan Grey Osterud, Bonds of Community. Cornell, 1991

Joan Jensen, Loosening the Bonds: Mid-Atlantic Farm Women. Yale, 1986

Lee Chambers-Schiller, Liberty, A Better Husband. Yale, 1984

Michael B. Katz, The People of Hamilton Harvard, 1975

Michael B. Katz, et al, The Social Organization of Early Industrial Capitalism. Harvard, 1982

Film: "The Molders of Troy" (90)

Week 7. (3/8) Slouching toward Modern Ways: Contradictions and Irregularity in the Transformations toward Modern Paths of Growing Up

*Viviana Zelizer, "The Price and Value of Children," American Journal of Sociology, 86 (1991), 1036-1056

*Bruce Bellingham, "Institution and Family: An Alternative View of Nineteenth-Century Child Saving," Social Problems, 33 (1986), S33-57

*_____, "Waifs and Strays: Child Abandonment, Foster Care, and Families in Mid-Nineteenth-Century New York," in The Uses of Charity, ed. Peter Mandler (Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 1990), 123-160

*_____, "The 'Unspeakable Blessing': Street Children, Reform Rhetoric, and Misery in Early Industrial Capitalism," Politics & Society, 12 (1983), 303-330

*Linda Gordon, "Single Mothers and Child Neglect, 1880-1920," American Quarterly, 37 (1985), 173-192

"Primary," choose one of:

Edward Eggleston, The Hoosier Schoolmaster. Indiana UP, 1984 [1871] or Stephen Crane, Maggie, Girl of the Streets. Fawcett, 1960 [1893]

Report (weeks 7 & 8):

Viviana Zelizer, Pricing the Priceless Child: The Changing Social Value of Children. Basic, 1985

Gary Cross, Kid's Stuff: Toys . . .. Harvard UP, 1997

David Nasaw, Children of the City at Work and at Play. Doubleday, 1985

Howard Chudacoff, How Old Are You? Age Consciousness in American Culture. Princeton, 1989

Elliott West, Growing Up with the Country: Childhood on the Far Western Frontier. Univ. of New Mexcio Press, 1989

Timothy Hacsi, Second Home: Orphan Asylums and Poor Families in America. Harvard UP, 1997

Kenneth Cmiel, A Home of Another Kind. Chicago, 1995

Eric C. Schneider, In the Web of Class: Delinquents and Reformers in Boston, 1810s-1930s. NYU Press, 1992

Slides from Canada's Visual History series

Week 8. (3/15) Change and Continuity: The Incomplete Revolution Among the Young. Policy, Institutions, the State, the Family, and Gender

GUA, 18-24 [for two+ weeks]

*Michael W. Sedlak, "Young Women and the City: Adolescence, Deviance and the Transformation of Educational Policy," History of Education Quarterly, 23 (1983), 1-28

*_____, "Youth Policy and Young Women, 1870-1972," Social Service Review, 56 (1982), 448-464

*Steven L. Schlossman and Stephanie Wallach, "The Crime of Precocious Sexuality," Harvard Educational Review, 48 (1978), 65-94

*Joan J. Brumberg, "'Ruined' Girls: Changing Community Responses to Illegitimacy in Upstate New York, 1890-1920," Journal of Social History,18 (1984), 247-272

*_____, "Chlorotic Girls, 1870-1920: A Historical Perspective on Female Adolescence," Child Development, 53 (1982), 1468-1477

Reports:

Linda Gordon, Heroes of their Own Lives: The Politics and History of Family Violence. Penguin/Viking, 1988

Miriam Formanek-Brunell, Made to Play House. Yale UP, 1993/

Steven Schlossman, Love and the American Delinquent. Chicago, 1977

Barbara Brenzel, Daughters of the State. MIT, 1983

LeRoy Ashby, Saving the Waifs. Temple, 1984

Joan J. Brumberg, Fasting Girls. Harvard, 1988

Week 9. (3/29) Turning the Century: A Progressive Synthesis? Reforming the Young

GUA, 18-24 [for two weeks]

*Eli Zaretsky, "The Place of the Family in the Origins of the Welfare State," in Re-Thinking the Family, ed. B. Thorne and M. Yalom (Longman, 1982), 188-224

"Primary": Anzia Yezierska, The Bread Givers. Persea, 1975 [1925]

Reports: on "reform," immigration, class, ethnicity, race, high schools, etc [citations on request], and/or  Susan Tiffin, In Whose Best Interst? Child Welfare Reform in the Pro-
gressive Era. Greenwood, 1982

Joanne J. Meyerowitz, Women Adrift: Independent Wage Earners in Chicago, 1880-1930. Univ. of Chicago Press, 1988

Kathy Peiss, Cheap Amusements: Working Women and Leisure in Turn-of-the Century New York. Temple, 1986

Lisa Fine, The Souls of the Skyscraper: Female Clerical Workers in Chicago, 1870-1930. Temple, 1990

Ileen A. DeVault, Sons and Daughters of Labor. Cornell, 1990

Regina G. Kunzel, Fallen Women, Problem Girls. Yale UP, 1993

Ruth M. Alexander, The "Girl Problem": New York, 1900-1930. Cornell UP, 1995

Mary E. Odem, Delinquent Daughters . . . 1885-1920. University of North Carolina Press, 1995

Lynn D. Gordon, Gender and Higher Education in the Progressive Era. Yale, 1990

Elizabeth Ewen, Immigrant Women in the Land of Dollars. Monthly Review, 1985

Miriam Cohen, Workshop to Office. Cornell, 1992

Film: "My Brilliant Career" (101)

Week 10. (4/5) Twentieth-Century Transitions I c. 1900s-1940s

GUA, 25-31 [for next two weeks]

*Michael Anderson, "The Emergence of the Modern Life Cycle in Britain," Social History, 10 (1985), 69-87 OR

*Peter Uhlenberg, "Changing Configurations of the Life Course," in Transitions, ed. Tamara K. Hareven (Academic, 1978), 65-98

*John Modell and Madeline Goodman, "Historical Perspectives," in At the Threshold: The Developing Adolescent, ed. S. Shirley Feldman and Glen R. Elliott (Harvard, 1990), 93-122

"Primary," choose one of:

Richard Wright, Black Boy. Perrenial Classic, 1966 [1937] OR  E.L. Doctorow, World's Fair. Random House, 1985

Optional: Richard Wall, "The Age at Leaving Home," Journal of Family History, 3 (1978), 181-202; "Leaving Home and Living Alone: An Historical Perspective," Population Studies, 43 (1989), 369-389

Reports (for next two-three weeks):

Joe Austin and Michael Nevin Willard, eds., Generations of Youth . . . Twentieth Century America. NYU Press, 1998

Reed Ueda, Avenues to Adulthood: The Origins of the High School in an American Suburb. Cambridge UP, 1987

Beth Bailey, From Front Porch to Back Seat: Courtship in Twentieth-

Century America. Johns Hopkins, 1988

Paula Fass, The Damned and the Beautiful: American Youth in the 1920s Oxford, 1978

John Modell, Into One's Own: From Youth to Adulthood in the United States, 1920-1975. Univ. of California, 1989.

Ellen K. Rothman, Hearts and Hands: A History of Courtship in America. Basic, 1984

John D'Emilio and Estelle Freedman, Intimate Matters: A History of Sexuality in America. Harper and Row, 1988

Film: "Rebel Without a Cause" (111)

Week 11. (4/12) Twentieth-Century Transitions II c. 1940s-1960s

GUA, 25-31 [for two weeks]

J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

*Susan Cahn, "Spirited Youth or Fiends Incarnate: The Samarcand Arson Case and Female Adolescence in the American South," Journal of Women's History, 9 )1998), 152-180

*Regina Kunzel, "Pulp Fictions and Problem Girls: Reading and Rewriting Single Pregnancy in the Postwar United States," American Historical Review, 100 (1995) 1465-1487

Optional: Sandra Cisneros, The House on Mango Street

*Vicki Ruiz, "'Star Struck': Acculturation, Adolescence, 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 (Univ. of California Press, 1993), 109-129;

*Ruiz, "Oral History and La Mujer: The Rosa Guerro Story," in Women on the U.S.-Mexico Border: Responses to Change, ed. Ruiz and Susan Tiano (Allen & Unwin, 1987), 21-231

Report: James Gilbert, A Cycle of Outrage: America's Reaction to the Juvenile Delinquent in the 1950s. Oxford, 1986

Elaine Tyler May, Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era. Basic, 1988

William Graebner, Coming of Age. Temple, 1990

Wini Breines, Young, White, and Miserable: Growing Up in the Fifties. Beacon, 1992

Grace Palladino, Teenagers: An American History. Basic Books, 1996 writings of Paul Goodman, Edgar Z. Friedenberg, David Riesman, etc.

Film: "High School" (75)

Week 12. (4/19) Boom! Boom! Baby Boomers! Radical Youth, Conformist Youth

*George Lipsitz, "Youth Culture, Rock 'n' Rock, and Social Crises," in The Sixties: FRom Memory to History, ed. David Farber (North Carolina, 1994), 206-234

*Todd Gitlin, The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage (Bantam, 1987), Part I, et passim; and  
*Michael Brake, Comparative Youth Culture (Routledge, 1985), ch 4., 83115

"Primary," choose one of:

Alix Kates Shulman, Memoirs of an Ex-Prom Queen. Bantam, 1973 OR  Claude Brown, The Children of Ham. Stein & Day, 1976

Reports: writings of Kenneth Keniston, Theodore Roszak; anthologies on the Sixties; fiction, films, popular culture, etc.

Austin and Willard, eds., Generations of Youth

Andrew Ross and Tricia Rose, eds., Microphone Fiends: Youth Music and Youth Culture. Routledge, 1994

Film: "Street Wise" (92)

Week 13. (4/26) All Fall Down? The Rise and Fall of the Cult of Childhood and Adolescence

GUA, 31-33

*Samuel Preston, "Children and the Elderly: Divergent Paths for America's Dependents," Demography, 21 (1984), 435-457]

*Andrew J. Cherlin, "The Changing American Family and Public Policy," in The Changing American Family and Public Policy, ed. Cherlin (Urban Institute, 1988), 1-29--remainder of volume optional

*Robin Kelley, "Kickin' Reality, Kickin' Ballistics: 'Gangsta Rap' and Postindustrial Los Angeles," Ch. 8 in Kelley, Race Rebels: Culture, Politics, and the Black Working Class (Free Press, 1994), 183-227, 282-294

Reports (weeks 13-14):

Frank F. Furstenberg and Andrew Cherlin, eds., Divided Families. Harvard UP, 1991

Andrew Cherlin, ed., The Changing American Family. Urban Institute, 1988

Richard R. Nelson and Felicity Skidmore, eds., American Families and the Economy: The High Cost of Living. National Academy Press, 1983

John L. Palmer, et al, eds., The Vulnerable. Urban Institute, 1988

Ellen Greenberger and Laurence Steinberg, When Teenagers Work: The Psychological and Social Costs of Adolescent Employment. Basic, 1986

"America's Childhood," Daedalus, 122 (Winter, 1993)

Donald Hernandez, America's Children. Russell Sage, 1993 Ruth Sidel, Women and Children Last. Penguin, 1986

____, On Her Own. Viking, 1990

Marie Winn, Children Without Childhood. Penguin, 1984

Valerie Suransky, The Erosion of Childhood. Univ. of Chicago Press, 1982 Neil Postman, The Disappearance of Childhood. Delacorte, 1982

Joel Best, Threatened Children. Chicago, 1990

Alex Kotlowitz, There Are No Children Here. Doubleday, 1991

Marian Wright Edelman, The Measure of Our Success. Beacon, 1992

Fred Hechinger, Fateful Choices: Healthy Youth for the 21st Century. Hill & Wang, 1993

David Hamburg, Today's Children. Times Books, 1992

Irwin Garfinkel, Assuring Child Support. Russell Sage, 1992

Lilian Rubin, Families on the Fault Line. HarperCollins, 1994

Austin and Willard, eds., Generations of Youth

Ross and Rose, eds., Microphone Fiends

Week 14. (5/3) Today?/Tomorrow? Is There a Future for Growing Up in the Age  of "the childlike adult and the adultlike child"? Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow

W. Norton Grubb and Marvin Lazerson, Broken Promises: How Americans Fail Their Children. Univ. of Chicago Press, 1988 [1982]

Reports: see Week 14, and

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and Reed Larson, Being Adolescent. Basic, 1984

Joseph Adelson, Inventing Adolscence. Transaction, 1986

Francis A.J. Ianni, The Search for Structure: A Report on American Youth Today. Free Press, 1989

Aaron Esman, Adolescence and Culture. Columbia, 1990

Marlis Buchmann, The Script of Life in Modern Society: Entry into Adulthood in a Changing World. Univ. of Chicago Press, 1989

Film: "Heathers" (102)

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