Nancy Lesko

Act Your Ageexamines and questions our tendency to label our youths as both endangered and dangerous creatures. Lesko analyzes both historical and present social and political factors that produce the presumed "natural adolescent." She also examines the concerns of nationalism, sexuality, and social order in terms of how they are projected onto the definitions of adolescents in the media, in schools, and in the home.

A Cultural Construction of Adolescence

Act Your Age!

Bessie Dernikos

Stephanie D. McCall

Alyssa Niccolini

Passions are high in education, and this edited volume offers bold new ways to conceive of the affective intensities shaping our present historical moment. Concerns over school practices deemed "ineffective," "disruptive," "irrational," or even "promising" are matters modulated by and through feelings, such as, optimism, shame, enhanced concentration, or empathy. The recent turn to affect offers vibrant methodological and theoretical material for an educational present marked by high stakes rhetoric, heated debate, teacher and student vulnerabilities, and extreme educational measures. Affect studies are a part of new materialist and post-humanist turns, and this volume connects these new theoretical directions within education. This comprehensive volume on affect crosses educational subfields and responds to the transdisciplinary interest in thinking through pedagogy, education, and feeling. This comprehensive reader addresses affect in education from a wide range of styles, topics, and perspectives. This collection offers an introduction to theory, empirical research studies, interviews with affect studies scholars, and an assessment of the current and future significance of affect studies in education. Contributors utilize a range of theoretical and interpretive approaches to thinking with and through schooling phenomena. Interviews with affect scholars in the humanities and social sciences address affective dimensions of teaching. The editors’ introduction, different foci, and interdisciplinary genres of writing help readers feel their ways into what affect studies in education does and might do. This field-defining collection will be of interest to a range of readers--from graduate students to established scholars--with varying levels of expertise and familiarity putting affect theories to work in education. All the contributions are accessible to those new to the theory, methods, and debates in this vibrant area of educational studies.

Theory, Research, and Pedagogy

Mapping the Affective Turn in Education

Susan Talburt

With recent attention to issues such as youth social exclusion, poverty, school underachievement, school violence, gang activity, sexuality, and youth’s interactions with media and the internet, youth studies has emerged as a significant interdisciplinary field. It has moved beyond its roots in subcultural studies to encompass a diverse array of disciplines, subfields, and theoretical orientations. Yet no volume exists that systematically presents and puts into dialogue the field’s areas of focus and approaches to research. As a unique blend of reference guide, conceptual dictionary, and critical assessment, Keywords in Youth Studies presents and historicizes the "state of the field." It offers theoretically-informed analysis of key concepts, and points to possibilities for youth studies’ reconstruction. Contributors include internationally-renowned field experts who trace the origins, movements, and uses and meanings of "keywords" such as resistance, youth violence, surveillance, and more. The blending of section essays with focused keywords offers beginning and advanced readers multiple points of entry into the text and connections across concepts. A must-read for graduate students, faculty, and researchers across a range of disciplines, this extraordinary new book promotes new interdisciplinary approaches to youth research and advocacy.

Nancy Lesko

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