Schooling and Identity

This is an advanced, discussion-based seminar, open to both undergraduate and graduate students, examining the dynamic relations between schooling and identity. We will explore how schools both enable and constrain the identities available to students, especially adolescents. We will examine these relations from multiple disciplinary perspectives, applying concepts from anthropology, sociology, and cultural studies to understanding how students not only construct identities for themselves within schools, but also negotiate the identities imposed by others. Course readings will consist primarily of ethnographic texts that center youth voices and examine processes of identification and identity development in schools through various theoretical lenses. Topics will include the role of peer culture, adult expectations, and institutional practices in fostering dynamics of belonging and exclusion within schools; how these dynamics shape students’ understandings of themselves as members of particular social categories or groups; the consequences of these processes for students’ academic engagement and school success; and the role of schooling in processes of social reproduction or change.