TLS250

043190

This course explores social issues by reading and responding to youth literature set in culturally-diverse local and global communities through a humanist perspective. By pairing scholarly readings with youth literature reflecting multiple cultural perspectives, students will critically examine their understanding of social issues and how youth are positioned in society. Students will develop an understanding of childhood and adolescence as socially constructed concepts, and how social identity categories such as race, gender, sexuality, and socioeconomic class, shape the experiences of youth across social locations. Students will critique the cultural worlds in youth literature and their responses to these books through inquiring into how their understandings are socially and culturally constructed. Students will build on their understanding to conceptualize how social issues impact their own communities and how they might use a humanist perspective and their social locations to effect change toward a more equitable society and world - thus creating hope in dark times.

GRD - Regular Grades A, B, C, D, E

Undergraduate

GEED - EPHUM (Gen Ed: EP Humanist)