FOR 2 ND YEAR STUDENTS “THE NET GENERATION: RUSSIAN AND AMERICAN YOUTH CULTURE” DEPARTMENT OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES

WHY TAKE THIS COURSE? This is a brief intro to the course from a previous year: Our idea was simple: to teach a course on a topic of mutual interest to Russian and American students, and to design it in such a way that would give all of our students the opportunity to serve as native informants for their peers abroad. Since we had been pairing up our students for language practice since 2008, we knew that the topics of student life, employment, and cultural norms tended to spark lively discussion among American and Russian students. For this reason we chose youth culture as our focus: we began the course with a general discussion of generational conflict and the family, then moved on to comparative discussions of education systems in Russia and the United States, student culture and co-curricular activities, children’s literature and young adults novels, youth movements and political activism, marginalized youth (e.g., youth in poverty or in prison), gender and advertising, popular culture and media, and social networking. Students completed readings, viewed films, and contributed to an online discussion board before each class; students were additionally required to write three short papers during the semester, to complete a group project with an oversea partner or partners, and to participate actively in class discussion.

COURSE DETAILS When? – 2 nd module How long? – 64 academic hours Assessment – pass/fail Teacher: Irina Yu. Shchemeleva Extra questions – contact Irina Yu.Shchemeleva (Head of the Department of Foreign Languages)