Unit information: New Kids on the Block': The Rise and Fall of the Phenomenon of Youth in the 20th Century (Level C Special Topic) in 2010/11

Unit name	New Kids on the Block': The Rise and Fall of the Phenomenon of Youth in the 20th Century (Level C Special Topic)
Unit code	HIST14022
Credit points	20
Level of study	C/4
Teaching block(s)	Teaching Block 2 (weeks 13 - 24)
Unit director	Dr. Furst
Open unit status	Not open
Pre-requisites	None
Co-requisites	None
School/department	Department of History (Historical Studies)
Faculty	Faculty of Arts

Description including Unit Aims

What does it mean to be young? This question is a very modern one. Youth only came to dominate the social and political agenda of the wider Western world with industrialisation and the rise of the middle classes. This course traces the origins of the concept of youth in the middle and end of the 19th century and charters its progression throughout the following hundred years. It examines the romantic notions of the German youth movement such as the Wandervogel as well as the practical concerns of the Boy Scouts. It examines how so many youth movements became politicised and the analyses the de-politicisation of youth in the post-war years, when life-style and cultural aspects came to the foreground. Finally it looks at the 60s and 70s as another pivotal point for youth when the understanding of and actions by youth became once more part of everyday politics.

Aims:

• To place students in direct contact with the current research interests of the academic tutor

• To enable students to explore the issues surrounding the state of research into youth in the late 19th and 20th centuries

• To introduce students to working with primary sources

• To introduce students to issues relating to setting primary sources in their wider context

• To introduce students to the practice of learning independently within a small-group context.

Intended Learning Outcomes

By the end of the unit students should have:

• deepened their understanding of f current historical research into the phenomenon of youth since the mid nineteenth century

• learned how to work with primary sources

• developed their skills in contributing to and learning from a small-group environment.

Teaching Information

10 x 2 hour seminars.

Assessment Information

1 x 2 hour exam

Reading and References

• John Gillis, Youth and history: tradition and change in European age relations (New York, 1974)

• Michael Rosenthal, The Character Factory: Baden Powell and the Boy Scout Movement (New York, 1984)

• Michael Kater, Hitler Youth (Cambridge, 2004)

• Anne Gorsuch, Youth in Revolutionary Russia (Indiana, 2000)

• Dick Hebdige, Subculture: The Meaning of Style (London, 1979)

• George Firsoff, 1968: The Spring of Youth (Bath, 1980)