Anthropology and Youth Culture

ANTH-215
Fall 2015
Mondays and Wednesdays 2:00-3:15
ICC 102
Professor Sylvia W. Onder
onders@georgetown.edu
Office Hours:
Monday 11:00-12:00 in Poulton Hall 210 in the Department of Arabic and Islamic Studies,
Thursday 2:00-3:00 in Car Barn 308 in the Department of Anthropology
and by appointment
Course Description
This course will take an anthropological and cross-cultural look at topics related to youth
culture, including:
The invention of childhood; child soldiers, refugees, and homeless children; coming of
age and puberty; cultural norms about gender, sexuality, and body image; political
action and resistance by youth; youth and crime; youth and incarceration; global musical
forms such as punk rock and hip hop; and cultural concepts of the transition to
adulthood.
Course assignments will include a midterm exam, posted responses to readings, a group
presentation of a book, and a final reflection paper. Class discussion of the readings in
large and small groups will be required, so students should come to class prepared to
address the readings in depth. Along with the required texts, there will be additional
assigned readings available on Blackboard.
I.
II.

III.

Attendance: Students should come to class regularly and on-time.

Absences should be explained and acknowledged by the professor by
email BEFORE any missed class, but should be avoided if at all possible.
Readings: Students should come to class having completed the assigned
readings. The lecture and/or discussion will presume that you have
completed the readings. There will be rotating posting roles for each
reading the postings are due based on the type of role assigned.
Student Postings should be typed/word-processed and spell-checked.
Make sure to write your name, the title and author of the reading, and
your role, at the top of the posting. After creating your document, post it
to the relevant place in the class webpage.

No late assignments will be accepted. Extensions will be granted only under

extenuating circumstances and must be cleared BEFORE the deadline.
Grading
Class Discussion Leader Role: 10%
Student Postings:
40%
Midterm:
20%

Group Presentation:
Reflection Paper:

20%
10%

Laptop Use in the Classroom

Laptops (and other devices) may be used in the classroom for note-taking and reference
to electronic readings. There may be times when the professor asks students with
internet connection to explore various sites in class. HOWEVER, if laptops or other
devices are used for unauthorized purposes, the right to have them in use during class
will be revoked at the discretion of the professor. Be considerate of your classmates:
Share access if it is a part of class work, and warn abusers before the professor revokes
electronic privileges for everyone in a fit of frustration caused by one or a few.
I assume that all of us learn in different ways, and that the organization of any course
will accommodate each student differently. Please e-mail me or talk to me as soon as
you can about your individual learning needs and how this course can best
accommodate them. If you do not have a documented disability, remember that other
support services, including the Writing Center and the Learning Resources Center, are
available to all students.
In Case of Campus Closure
If campus closes due to weather or other events, the student posting assignments will be
due at the same time as they would be under normal conditions. If you were assigned to
present in class on a day when campus is closed, then you should write a short summary
of the reading and a reflection on how this reading fits into the themes of the class and
post it on the class webpage. Instead of class participation through discussion during
that class, every student should read the posts about the reading and write a short
paragraph that brings out some interesting point from the postings. This paragraph will
be due by e-mail before the next class meeting. In case of loss of electricity, you will
have to be more creative about how you find your classmates posting ideas and how to
get them to the professor!
Required books, in the order in which they will be assigned:

)
)
)
)
)

1) Margaret Mead
Coming of Age in Samoa
Series: Perennial Classics
Paperback: 256 pages
Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks; Reprint edition (February 20, 2001)
ISBN-10: 0688050336
ISBN-13: 978-0688050337

)
)
)

2) C. J. Pascoe
Dude, You're a Fag: Masculinity and Sexuality in High School
Publisher: University of California Press; With a New Preface edition (November 1, 2011)
ISBN-10: 0520271483
ISBN-13: 978-0520271487

)
)

3) Youth Resistance Research and Theories of Change (Critical Youth Studies) (November, 2013)
by Eve Tuck (Editor), K. Wayne Yang (Editor)
Series: Critical Youth Studies
Paperback: 256 pages

)
)
)

Publisher: Routledge; 1 edition (November 22, 2013)

ISBN-10: 041581684X
ISBN-13: 978-0415816847

Students will work with a group to present one of the following books:
Each Student is required to chose one of the following (so, for athletes and scholarship holders, the price of one
should be covered)
)
)

1) Bush Wives and Girl Soldiers: Women's Lives through War and Peace in Sierra Leone (2009)
by Chris Coulter
1
Paperback: 304 pages
2
Publisher: Cornell University Press; 1 edition (August 13, 2009)
3
ISBN-10: 0801475120
4
ISBN-13: 978-0801475122
5
2) New Desires, New Selves: Sex, Love, and Piety among Turkish Youth (2015)
by Gul Ozyegin
1
Paperback: 384 pages
2
Publisher: NYU Press (August 21, 2015)
3
ISBN-10: 147985381X
4
ISBN-13: 978-1479853816
6
3) Sleeping Rough in Port-au-Prince: An Ethnography of Street Children and Violence in Haiti (2008)
by J. Christopher Kovats-Bernat
1
Paperback: 256 pages
2
Publisher: University Press of Florida (December 1, 2008)
3
ISBN-10: 0813033020
4
ISBN-13: 978-0813033020
7
4) People and Folks: Gangs, Crime and the Underclass in a Rustbelt City
by John M. Hagedorn,
Paperback: 299 pages
Publisher: Lake View Press; 2nd edition (January 1, 1998)
ISBN: 09417024645)
5) God's Gangs: Barrio Ministry, Masculinity, and Gang Recovery (2013)
by Edward Flores
1
Paperback: 243 pages
2
Publisher: NYU Press (December 11, 2013)
3
ISBN-10: 147987812X
ISBN-13: 978-1479878123
Learning Objectives
By the end of this course, you should be able to
1. Understand the various ways that Youth Culture has been an object of study for
cultural anthropology, and the anthropological methodologies used to study it
2. Confront the personal and social reality of belonging to culture(s) and the common
human tendency to form and find meaning in more or less exclusive groups

3. Explain a diversity of ways in which childhood youth adolescence and

adulthood have been conceptualized (or not) in various human cultures
4. Produce thoughtful analysis of both basic and complex anthropological topics by
making connections between readings, lectures, films, guest talks, embodied
experiences, and ethnographic observations
5. Become familiar with the main anthropological research practices of participant
observation and qualitative fieldwork and the published product, ethnography, by
reading and analyzing various examples
6. Recognize the ethical responsibilities of field research and the analysis of human
subjects, as well as the politics of selecting subjects and of writing about human
activities and identities
7. Hone the skills of reading, outlining, note-taking, summarizing, leading discussion,
synthesizing discussion, and making connections through individual and collaborative
work for the student posting assignments
8. Demonstrate awareness of how anthropological insight can make life outside the
classroom more interesting and how other disciplines, professions, and perspectives
might be useful for anthropological analysis
THE ENGELHARD PROJECT
Our course has been named an Engelhard course through a grant from the Charles
Engelhard Foundation and from a larger national project called Bringing Theory to
Practice. This national project sponsors different approaches to enhancing engaged
learning in college courses. Georgetowns unique focus is on the development of a
pedagogy of curriculum infusion, which integrates college health and wellness issues
into the content of academic courses by creating meaningful connections between reallife issues of student mental health and wellness and the course content.
At various points in the semester, we will explore these ties through close reflection and
direct exploration of how health and wellness issues intersect with our course content.
This semester, we will have a guest speaker in this class who will relate the activities and
issues of Georgetown University to the readings we will be discussing in this course. It is
this connection between the academic and real-life issues that will be the basis of
reflection paper due in exam week.
In order to help evaluate this project, at the end of the semester I will ask you fill out a
short survey about how the curriculum infusion process worked and about what you
learned. You may also be contacted this semester or next year to participate in a focus
group. Your participation in both the survey and the focus groups is voluntary and
anonymous, but the more people we get to participate the more helpful the information
will be to our evaluation of the project.
The Anthropology Major
The Anthropology major offers courses that provide students with training in
ethnographic analysis, field methodologies, and socio-cultural theory. Our core and
elective courses share a common vision of anthropology as a discipline steeped in
methodologies and concepts that are both discipline-specific and interdisciplinary. Our
curriculum prepares students to understand and to communicate the complex linkages
between culture and power in changing local, national, and global contexts. Quite
critically, our courses explore the public nature of anthropology. The courses provide
students the tools to make connections between in-class readings and discussions and
pressing issues surrounding human rights, legal systems, transnational migration,

politics, race, gender, religion and social justice. Our majors have opportunities to apply
anthropological thinking and methodologies to urgent human issues in a range of
settings such as courts, government agencies, community-based organizations, schools,
and workplaces.
For more information, see: http://anthropology.georgetown.edu/
The Department of Anthropology is on the second floor of Car Barn
Wednesday, September 2 Introductions
September 7 Labor Day No Classes
September 9 Wednesday
Student Postings due before class:
1) LeVine On Ethnographic Studies of Childhood
2) Margaret Mead Coming of Age in Samoa Intros and Chs I-III
Class Discussion (LeVine and Mead Intros and Ch I-III)
Readings and Posting assignments from Culture Counts Introduction to Anthropology
Student Postings are to be made to the class webpage:
For each reading, there are six student posting roles that will rotate:
Due 9 am before class:
1) Outline
2) Quotations
3) Questions

Due in Class:
4) Discussion Leader

Due 9 am before the next class:

5) Synthesis
6) Connections
Please write your posts in a word processing program (spell check!) and save them with a heading of:
ANTH 215/Your Name/Author's Name/Title of Reading/pages if relevant/Your Role
Outline Outline the major points of the reading with some significant sub-points
Quotations extract 3 important quotations with enough context to carry the meaning
Questions create 3 questions that could be used to guide discussion from the reading, with some context to

help in answering
Discussion Leader Review the postings of the first three roles, and come to class prepared to lead discussion
on the reading
Synthesis take notes of the in-class discussion and write a post that summarizes the major points of discussion
(controversy, questions asked, opinions)
Connections find a way to connect this reading to other topics of the course (this will become easier as more
readings are done) and/or to topics outside the course
Come up to me at the end of class and tell me you read the whole syllabus, and I will
give you a Turkish evil eye protection sticker!