2024-2025 Academic Catalog

Dec 03, 2024

2024-2025 Academic Catalog

SSJ 30322 - Adolescent Girls and International Development

The adolescent girl has risen to the top of the international development and gender-equality agendas. One argument for this rise is that investing in girls can solve poverty, but only if they attend school and are protected from traditional social norms such as early marriage that threaten their educational trajectory. This course problematizes the promise of girls’ education, explores the multiple representations of girls, their problems and needs, and their rise to the forefront of the development agenda. Students will analyze how initiatives to educate and empower adolescent girls rely upon particular notions or framing of a racialized, Third World Girl, which intersect with and reproduce long-standing, global development processes and structures, originating in colonialism. Students also explore girls’ agency, girl-led activism and advocacy, and girls’ networks that facilitate social change both in the United States and in a select number of countries around the world.

Formerly IDCE 30322. Students who have already passed IDCE 30322 cannot receive credit for SSJ 30322 and should not take this course.

Anticipated Terms Offered: Bi-Annually