ECS 6826 - Youth & Action Research

Meets with ECS 7826. This graduate seminar offers an in-depth exploration of theoretical, methodological, and practical issues in the design and implementation of Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR), and activist scholarship as well as the issues faced by researchers using this qualitative method. Through interdisciplinary scholarship as well as the issues faced by researchers using this qualitative method. Through interdisciplinary instruction the professor will engage the participants in readings across academic disciplines (i.e., sociology, cultural studies, gender studies, and anthropology) and simultaneously explore, reflect, and identify YPAR with youth and trouble methodological debates and research positions that frame youth and action research. In this capacity, the class discusses how youth (past and present) produce knowledge that informs what is popular culture, citizenship, art, politics, and identity while resisting mainstream representations that have constructed them as "other" (i.e., undocumented, gang member, teen mother, thief, drug dealer, terrorist, etc.). The course will be taught in the spirit of PAR, therefore learning will be a process of mutual exchange.