STYLE AND IDENTITY IN YOUTH CULTURE
ANTH/AMST 290
Spring 2013
Professor Betsy Traube
etraube@wesleyan.edu; X3066
Office hours: Thursdays, 4:10-6PM or by appointment (ANTH 1)
Course Description
“Youth culture” is not intended to reference a fixed, bounded, spatialized group with an
autonomous culture. “Youth” is a category, not a collectivity; its references are notoriously
fluid, variable and context-specific, and there is no unitary, organic “culture” rooted in and
expressive of “its” mode of life. Young people occupy a range of positions within larger social
formations controlled primarily by adults, and if they are marked off in various ways from other
age categories, they are also divided from one another on multiple lines, including class, gender,
sexuality, race, and ethnicity. Nevertheless, designating our object of study as “youth culture”
distinguishes a perspective (developed in anthropology, sociology and cultural studies) on young
people as active agents in both consuming and creating cultural forms, rather than as
undergoing a universal, psychologically stressful stage of development. “Youth culture”, in other
words, references the “cultural practices of youth”, a vast, ever-expanding field that encompasses
ordinary, everyday activities as well as more spectacular performances of both “mainstream” and
“subcultural” youth, in both socially privileged and disadvantaged positions. This field includes
media representations and other symbolic goods and experiences marketed to young people, who
have become increasingly valuable consumers since the postwar era. While young people’s
consumption choices are not rigidly imposed on them, neither should they be seen as absolutely
“free”; what young people choose to consume as well as the identities they negotiate through
consumption (and thus the futures they may envision) are conditioned in part by commercial
interests and by structural inequalities in access to material and cultural resources.
Books:
Oneka La Bennett, She’s Mad Real: Popular Culture and West Indian Girls in Brooklyn. New
York University Press, 2011
Amy C. Wilkins, Wannabes, Goths and Christians: The Boundaries of Sex, Style, and Status.
The University of Chicago Press, 2008
All other readings will be available on Moodle. Please check Moodle regularly for weekly
readings; if there is a change in relation to the syllabus, the Moodle version will be the correct
version.
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Assessment:
3-page essay on assigned topics; due Friday, March 1; worth 30% of final grade
Participation in a discussion-facilitation group on one of the following dates: Feb 14, Feb 21,
March 7, March 28, April 4, April 18; worth 10% of final grade. Please keep in mind that while
class participation over the semester is neither graded nor formally tracked, informed and robust
participation does register on me and can positively influence my overall evaluation of your
performance.
Research paper outline (1-2 pages) plus preliminary bibliography; due Monday, April 22; 10% of
final grade.
Final research paper, 10 pages; due Tuesday, May 14; worth 50% of final grade
Laptop computer policy: You are welcome to use your laptop or tablet as an aid for class work.
However, please do not use computing devices when you sit in the back three rows of the
classroom, and do not use them for email, Facebook, or similar applications during class. Please
do not use smart phones in class and be sure to turn them off.
Disability Policy
It is the policy of Wesleyan University to provide reasonable accommodations to students with
documented disabilities. Students, however, are responsible for registering with Disabilities
Services, in addition to making requests known to me in a timely manner. If you require
accommodations in this class, please make an appointment with to see me as soon as possible
(by preference during the first two weeks of the semester), so that appropriate arrangements can
be made. The procedures for registering with Disabilities Services can be found at
http://www.wesleyan.edu/studentaffairs/disabilities/studentguide.html.
Syllabus
Thursday, January 24: Introduction to the course; no assigned reading
Perspectives on Youth Cultural Studies
January 29, January 31
Mary Bucholtz, Youth and Cultural Practice. Annual Review of Anthropology, 31 (2002):
525-552.
Sunaina Maira and Elizabeth Soep, “United States of Adolescence?”: Reconsidering US
Youth Culture Studies. Young, 12(3), 2004: 245-269.
Paul Hodkinson, Youth Cultures: A critical outline of key debates. Pp. 1-21 in Youth
Culture: Scenes, Subcultures and Tribes, eds. P. Hodkinson & W. Deicke, Routledge, 2007.
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Youth and the Market: A Short History of Consuming Youth
February 5, February 7
Bill Osgerby, Introduction: Youth culture and the media. Pp. 1-14 in Youth Media,
Routledge, 2004.
Kelly Schrum, “’Teena Means Business’: Teenage Girls’ Culture and Seventeen
Magazine, 1944-50.” Pp. 134-163 in Delinquents and Debutantes, S. Inness, ed. NYU Press,
1998.
Steven Miles, Dallas Cliff & Vivien Burr, “Fitting In and Sticking Out”: Consumption,
Consumer Meanings and the Construction of Young People’s Identities. Journal of Youth Studies
1(1), 1998: 81-96.
Mary Jane Kehily, More sugar? Teenage magazines, gender display and sexual learning.
European Journal of Cultural Studies 2(1), 1999: 65-89.
Recommended: Mary Celeste Kearney, Birds on the Wire: Troping Teenage Girlhood
through Telephony in mid-20th century US Media Culture. Cultural Studies 19(5) September
2005: 568-601.
Spaces, Practices, Identities: “Doing Gender” In and After School
February 12, **February 14
Julie Bettie, Women without Class: Chicas, Cholas, Trash, and the Presence/Absence of
Class Identity, Signs, 26/1 (Autumn, 2000): 1-35. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3175379.
Dawn Currie, Deirdre Kelley & Shauna Pomerantz, “The geeks shall inherit the earth”:
Girls’ Agency, Subjectivity and Empowerment. Journal of Youth Studies, 9:4, 2007:
419-436.
Oneka LaBennett, “Our Museum”, (chapter 2, pp.41-102) in She’s Mad Real
Mary Celeste Kearney, Productive spaces: Girls’ bedrooms as sites of cultural
production. Journal of Children and Media, 1(2), 2007: 126-141.
Anoop Nayak and Mary Jane Kehily, Playing it Straight: Masculinities, homophobia and
schooling. Journal of Gender Studies 5(2) 1996: 211-230.
** First discussion group, Feb 14
Spaces, Practices, and Identities: The Gendered Pedagogies of Sports
February 19, *February 21
Laura Grindstaff & Emily West, Cheerleading and the Gendered Politics of Sport. Social
Problems, 53 (4) (2006): 500-518. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4488187
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Eric Anderson, Inclusive Masculinity: The Changing nature of masculinities (selection
TBA).
Jake Nussbaum, chapter 2, skateboarding section, pp. 48-63 (or read the whole chapter)
in Growing Out. Wesleyan Honors Thesis in Anthropology, 2010.
Deirdre Kelly, Shauna Pomerantz & Dawn Currie, “You Can Break So Many More
Rules”: The Identity Work and Play of Becoming Skater Girls. Pp. 113-125 in Youth Culture and
Sport, eds. M Giardina & Michele Donnelly, Routledge, 2007.
*Second discussion group on Feb 21
Style as Distinction: The Cultural Politics of Cool
February 26, February 28
Sarah Thornton, “The Distinction of Cultures without Distinction,” pp. 1-25 in Club
Cultures: Music, Media and Subcultural Capital, Wesleyan University Press, 1996
Amy Wilkins, “From Geek to Freak” (chapter 2), pp. 24-53 in Wannabes, Goths and
Christians.
Rosaleen Croghan, Christine Griffin, Janine Hunter & Anne Phoenix, Style Failure:
Consumption, Identity and Social Exclusion. Journal of Youth Studies 9(4), 2006: 463-478.
***Paper due, 5PM Friday, March 1***
Self-Invention in the Club: Mainstream and Alternative Leisure Spaces
March 5, **March 7
Wilkins, “So Full of Myself as a Chick,” chapter 3, pp. 54-87.
David Grazian, On the Make: The Hustle of Urban Nightlife, University of Chicago
Press, 2008. Selection TBA.
Ross Haenfler, Straight Edge: Hardcore Punk, Lean Living and Social Change, Rutgers
University Press, 2006. Selection TBA.
 Third discussion group, on March 7
SPRING BREAK
Sex: Abstaining, Regulating, and Indulging
March 26, *March 28
Wilkins, “Just Good People” and “Abstinence”, chapters 4 & 5, pp. 88-152.
Laura Hamilton and Elizabeth Armstrong, Gendered Sexuality in Young Adulthood:
Double Binds & Flawed Options. Gender and Society 23(5), 2009: 589-616.
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Haenfler, Straight Edge, “Masculinity in Contradiction: and “Girls United and Divided”
chapters 5 &6, pp. 102-149.
*Fourth discussion group on March 28
The Uses of Hip-Hop
April 2, April 4
Greg Dimitriadis, Performing Identity/Performing Culture: Hip Hop as Text, Pedagogy,
and Lived Practice, Peter Lang, 2009. Selection TBA.
Michael Dyson, “How Real is This?” in Know What I Mean?
Andreana Clay, Keepin' it real: Black youth, hip-hop culture, and black identity. The
American Behavioral Scientist, 46, 10 (June 2003): 1346-1358.
Rebecca Ingalls, ‘Stealing the Air’: The Poet-Citizens of Youth Spoken-Word. The
Journal of Popular Culture, 45(1), 2012: 99-117
Nick Petrie, “Hip Hop Consumption at ‘Diversity University’. Paper for ANTH277,
(December 2009).
*Fifth discussion group on April 4
Youth in Motion: Negotiating Cultural Citizenship
April 9, April 11
LaBennett, “Dual Citizenship in the Hip-Hop Nation” and “I Think They’re Looking for
a Skinny Chick!” chapters 3-4, pp.103-182 in She’s Mad Real.
Sunaina Maira, Identity Dub: the paradoxes of an Indian American youth subculture.
Cultural Anthropology 14(1), 1999: 29-60.
Shalini Shankar, “Living and Desiring the Desi Bling Life,” pp. 80-99, Desiland:
Teen Culture, Class and Success in Silicon Valley, Duke U Press, 2008.
Recommended: Mary Jane Kehily & Anoop Nayak, Global femininities: consumption,
culture and the significance of place. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education,
29(3), 2008: 325-342.
Youth Travel as Adventure and Self-Realization
April 16, *April 18
Lilly Shapiro, Pleasure and Danger on the Gringo Trail, Wesleyan Honors Thesis in
Anthropology, 2009. (selection TBA).
Andrew King, Minding the gap? Young people’s accounts of taking a gap year as a form
of identity work in higher education. Journal of Youth Studies 14(3), 2011: 341-357.
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Luc Desforges, ‘Checking Out the Planet’: Global representations/Local Identities and
Youth Travel, pp. 175-192 in cool Places: Geographies of Youth Cultures, eds. T Skelton & G.
Valentine, Routledge, 1998.
 Sixth discussion group on April 18
*Research paper proposal due 10AM Monday, April 22
Mobilizing Youth: Activism and Movements
April 23, 25
Andreana Clay, “All I Need Is One Mic”: Mobilizing Youth for Social Change In the
Post-Civil Rights Era. Social Justice 33(2) (2006) p. 105-21
Jennifer Tilton, “What is ‘The Power of the Youth?’” in Dangerous or Endangered: Race
and the Politics of Youth in Urban America, NYU Press, 2010, pp. 191-228.
Sunaina Maira, “Imperial Feeling: Youth Culture, Citizenship and Globalization”,
chapter 9 in Globalization: Culture and Education in the New Millennium, eds. Marcelo M.
Suárez-Orozco and Desirée Baolian Qin-Hilliard,
http://site.ebrary.com/lib/wesleyan/Doc?id=10062340
Youth Transitions: Structural Inequality and Envisioned Futures
April 30, May 2
LaBennett, Conclusion to She’s Mad Real
Tilton, Conclusion to Dangerous or Endangered
Karen Foster and Dale Spencer, At risk of what? Possibilities over probabilities in the
study of young lives. Journal of Youth Studies 14(1), 2011: 125-142.
Concluding Reflections
May 7 (no assigned reading)
Final papers due Tuesday, May 14;
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