Adolescence, the time between childhood dependency and full social adulthood, is a concept formalized in the late-nineteenth century, but a topic of concern since at least the Middle Ages in Western culture. It is a moment in which nature threatens to escape from the mechanisms of social order, and the moment at which the self-conscious and implicit elements of culture get passed on to the future. With some attention to European history as a background, we will focus on changing experiences of youth in colonial America and the United States. Our hypothesis is that adolescence is a screen onto which are projected many of the anxieties of a culture, and that we can read those projections as evidence of larger cultural change. Our data will include autobiographies, census data, artifacts of adolescent culture (schoolbooks, clothing, popular music), social-science analysis, fiction, and films. Evaluation will be based on contributions to class discussions, two short essays, and midterm and final exams. Groups A and D

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