HCH Fosters Discussion

From majors in hip-hop studies to classes on crime novels, a new wave of academia has trended recently toward grabbing non-traditional subjects and planting them under the revelatory light of scholarship.

Such was the case in the Humanities Center at Harvard’s (HCH) first undergraduate event of the year, a discussion called “Teenage Wastelands” led by Professor Linda Schlossberg in the Barker Center last Wednesday. Schlossberg and the event’s attendees discussed the increasingly frequent portrayals of dystopian societies in young adult novels, examining topics such as conformity, gender roles in adolescence, and the dystopia as a metaphor for growing up.

The informal dialogue focused particularly on two recent hits: Scott Westerfield’s “Uglies” series and Suzanne Collins’ “The Hunger Games” trilogy.

“People often characterize teens as being shallow and conformist—as being interested only in popularity, looks, and fashion—but the success of these works show that teens are interested in fiction that critiques the dominant culture,” Schlossberg said.

She began the discussion by outlining the psychological power of the dystopian setting, then tying it to the fears of and constraints upon modern day teenagers.

“The best dystopias take our current cultural anxieties and magnify them, shine a light on them, and help illuminate for us things that are problems in our culture,” Schlossberg said. “If they do this well, they take some of our concerns and tweak them a little.”

Schlossberg then opened up the discussion to the 12 participants. They explored older dystopian pieces and depictions of the teen years, contrasted these works with utopias and real-life circumstances, and connected the topic to everything from “Catcher in the Rye” to “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.”

“Part of it [the event’s appeal] is the excitement of getting to talk about something that people care a lot about and do in their free time, but with a professor,” said Undergraduate Committee member Spencer B.L. Lenfield ’12, a Crimson arts contributor, who helped organize the event. “She uses the perspective she has as an academic to think about the same kind of fiction that a lot of undergraduates read for fun.”

“One of the things I appreciated about this event is it took this very particular subgenre which many would consider totally without merit, and then used that to examine greater issues,” attendee Samantha A. Meier ’12 said. “I think that’s something that is really worthwhile.”

As a professor in the women, gender, and sexuality department—popular around campus for her class Culture and Belief 37: “The Romance: From Jane Austen to Chick Lit”— Schlossberg also tied these books to issues of gender identity in discussing their unusually strong female protagonists.

“It doesn’t really fit into our gendered expectations that the protagonists in these books, which are all about rebel forces fighting against the system in physical and sometimes very violent ways, would be female,” Schlossberg said.

Rather than opting to lecture on a subject well-worn in academia, Schlossberg said she chose this topic for its novelty. She’d become interested in the books only recently, talking about them with friends, and had found their appeal and subject matter unique.

“There’s an interesting crossover appeal that is not unlike the appeal of the ‘Twilight’ series and the ‘Harry Potter’ books, which I find intriguing,” Schlossberg said. “I thought I would take advantage of the informal structure and find out what students thought about this issue, rather than just listen to myself speak about something I teach on a regular basis.”

As the first undergraduate event of the year, the discussion also encapsulated the Humanities Center Undergraduate Committee’s mission for the year—facilitating cross-discipline thought and conversation in the humanities for undergraduates, echoing the resources available to graduate students and professors.

According to Lenfield, other undergraduate events will follow throughout the year, including both professor-led discussions and larger-scale presentations by non-faculty members on a variety of humanities topics.

“Our goal is to encourage similar discussions across concentrations for undergraduates and expose undergraduates to the sort of ideas that people often engage with at the level of professional academics, but that undergraduates might not come in contact with,” Lenfield said.

In students’ opinions, events like these all come back to the simple pleasure of exploring subjects they genuinely enjoy.

“It’s so much fun in the middle of a crazy day to just sit around and talk about books with people who are just as excited as you are, and that’s definitely what the event was,” attendee Lila G. Brown ’11 said. “There was no pretension, no scholarly words flying around—it was just a great conversation.”