Rachel Conrad

This seminar in social and literary studies of childhood centers and explores poetry written by young people, primarily from the late twentieth-century United States. We will consider young people as cultural producers, as poets in the present, and as writers crafting their own ideas and artistry. Readings in childhood studies, literary studies, and critical literacy studies will help frame these ideas in contrast to cultural conceptions of children as cultural consumers, as potential poets in the future, and as objects of adults' pedagogical ideas. We will also explore the work of important advocates for young poets including Gwendolyn Brooks and June Jordan Keywords:Poetry, Childhood Studies, Literature, African American Literature

What would it mean for age to be understood as an axis of power and a category of sociopolitical dynamics such as gender, race, or class? How does ageism or age-related injustice intersect with other forms of injustice? How does the idea of generations inform studies of sociology, history, literature, or youth-produced culture? What do critical studies of youth and age add to our understanding of education, antiracism studies, literature, ethnic studies, history, psychology, and the arts? This course is open to students working at any stage of their Division II concentration on topics intersecting with critical approaches to youth, age, and/or generation across a broad spectrum of curricular areas including (but not limited to) the arts, education, creative writing, childhood studies, literary studies, sociology, and critical psychology. Students will formulate and pursue their own questions and projects relevant to youth, age and/or generation Keywords:Youth, Childhood, Age

Young activist Xiuhtezcatl Martinez has written that "the youth of the world are continuing to rise to power and shape our culture." In this course, we will examine texts written by youth, and youth action and activism primarily in the contemporary US, as forms of enacting such power and shaping. We will use methods from critical youth studies and literary studies to take seriously young people's social-political and cultural engagements. In focusing on young people writing and taking action for racial, environmental, and climate justice, we will consider youth-produced texts and action/activism as well as conditions that make possible youth-and-adult collaborations Keywords:youth, activism, children, childhood studies, environmental studies

This course centers Bronzeville Boys and Girls, a pivotal 1956 book of poetry for children written by Gwendolyn Brooks and reprinted with illustrations by Faith Ringgold in 2007. In this book, Brooks creates a community of child characters living in the African American community of Bronzeville in Chicago, and explores their lives, thoughts, and emotions. The book served as a forerunner of work by other African American poets and writers in the 1960s and 1970s that center young Black characters, including poet Lucille Clifton's series of Everett Anderson books and John Steptoe's picturebook Stevie. We will read these and related works and explore questions of race, representation, and young audiences; ideologies of childhood; and poetry and childhood. We will also consider questions of age, agency, and authorship given that Brooks wrote poems as a child that informed Bronzeville Boys and Girls and Steptoe created Stevie in his teen years Keywords:African-American literature, poetry, childhood studies, youth