Schooling and Identity

Course is Full

Course Code

EDSO 33002 91

Cross Listed Course Code(s)

EDSO 23002, CHDV 23003, RDIN 23002, RDIN 33002, SOCI 20530, SOCI 30530

Course Description

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.

Course Criteria

Instructor(s)

Maximilian Cuddy

This course is full. UChicago students can request to be added on a waitlist. Visiting students are strongly invited to choose another course and email summersession@uchicago.edu to inquire about the waitlist status.