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Academic Year 2000/2001


Adolescence
COL 304 SP

By now commonly in America, adolescence is recognized as a central, indeed, crucial, stage in one's move toward adult definition. Often tumultuous, it is a time for trying out values, new experiences, roles and interests. Adolescence can be viewed psychoanalytically as the sustained period for trying to arrange and rearrange one's biological given of sex and reproductive capacity with one's inner images of self and gender, images that have accumulated in part from internalized parental, environment al and social attitudes, the pleasures and traumata of childhood, and the autonomous push of the instincts through the psycho-sexual stages of development. This course will address imaginative representations of adolescence, its psychology and social hist ory, the better to understand the struggle for personal consolidation--and its vicissitudes--in young men and women. The course will also pose an educational question: Can the study of adolescence by advanced college students (themselves adolescents close to adulthood) add significantly to their knowledge and self-awareness and thereby to their growth?

MAJOR READINGS

Such works as:
Anna Freud, "On Adolescence";
Shakespeare, HENRY IV, PART I;
Spark, THE PRIME OF MISS JEAN BRODY;
Freud, THREE ESSAYS ON SEXUALITY;
Frank, THE DIARY OF A YOUNG GIRL;
Blos, ON ADOLESCENCE;
Salinger, THE CATCHER IN THE RYE;
Shakespeare, ROMEO AND JULIET;
Angelou, I KNOW WHY THE CAGED BIRD SINGS;
Faulkner, THE BEAR;
Kingston, THE WOMAN WARRIOR;
Joyce, PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN;
Shakespeare, HAMLET

EXAMINATIONS AND ASSIGNMENTS

Papers, oral reports.

Unless preregistered students attend the first class meeting or communicate directly with the instructor prior to the first class, they will be dropped from the class list. NOTE: Students must still submit a completed Drop/Add form to the Registrar's Office.

COURSE FORMAT: Discussion

REGISTRATION INFORMATION

Level: UGRD    Credit: 1    Gen Ed Area Dept: SBS COL    Grading Mode: Student Option   

Prerequisites: NONE Links to Web Resources For This Course.

Last Updated on MAR-26-2001


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