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Life is colloquially imagined as taking place through distinctly separate stages, each one of which serving to define the individual. These stages conceptualize appropriate actions and behaviors for particular age groups, yet they are by no means universal in time or place. Through an interdisciplinary and broad reading of various periods and places, mainly in the modern Anglo-American context, this course will interrogate how the category of age impacts the historical analysis of moral economies. What attributes of moral economies were to be inculcated at various points in the life-cycle and in what ways were they contested? What role does education, both formal and informal, play in imparting values and morality in the individual, and does this process alter throughout the life-cycle? What is distinctly modern about this development? The course as a whole will go through the life cycle stage by stage, and will allow students to identify the major themes and questions in each of the important stages of life. It will also question the reasons for the standard characterization of each stage. Historians are beginning to consider childhood and adolescence as important categories of analysis, yet other stages of the life cycle have received scant or no attention. One of our guiding principles throughout the course will be to treat other stages as equally important in defining who we are and who we have been in the past, through theoretical awareness and historical examples. |
