WGST 1808 Lecture 2: Childhood in Canadian Context Outline 2017 Final (1)

• School: Carleton University
• Department: Women's and Gender Studies
• Course: WGST 1808
• Professor: dryer

Document Summary

This course provides an introduction to the study of the child, children and childhoods. Childhood is a contested site and is often the target of political, social and economic campaigns. Children are often assumed to be innocent and in need of protection, but contradictory relationships between childhood, aggression and sexuality also surface. The definitions that adults use to explain childhood (as culture, as stage of development, as experience) impact the lived realities and futures of children. Together, we will ask how definitions of the child shape individual experience, historical narratives, cultural representations, political agendas and futures. In this course, emphasis will be placed on understanding how the construction of childhood is contingent on time, space and adult desires. In this course we will interrogate the identities, emotions, styles and cultures that children produce. What representations of ideal" or undesirable" childhood circulate in.