Youth is a powerful category. It is also a contested one. Young people have historically signified both the promise of the future and the threat of the present. As such, young people are endowed with a particular political and social significance. But what did it mean to be young in the twentieth century, and how far did the experience of being young shift as new ideas about adolescence began to emerge? This advanced option introduces students to youth in the twentieth century, and asks how the lived experience of young people in Britain changed over the course of almost one hundred years. Students will explore how the very category of youth has been moulded by a range of bodies including politicians, institutions, commerce, and the media. This module will also explore how young people transformed the very face of modern Britain. By exploring young people's media, consumption habits, politics, and lifestyles, students will work directly with sources produced for, and in many cases produced by, young people. In doing so, the module shows how understanding youth experience is an essential way of charting social, cultural, and political change in modern Britain. Seminar topics may include: youth and the advent of mass consumerism, the 'invention' of the teenager; youth and the state; urban development and the spaces of teenage leisure; teenage magazines and youth media; teenage sexuality and sex education; youth culture and subculture; youth, work, and (un)employment.
Learning Outcomes
By the end of the module students should be able to:
analyse and critically appraise key events and historical processes relevant to the subject under scrutiny
analyse and critically evaluate a wide range of relevant primary source material
critically evaluate the historiographical context and trends of the subject under exploration
summarise, synthesise and evaluate the subject material in a sophisticated written form
