With support from the University of Richmond

History News Network

History News Network puts current events into historical perspective. Subscribe to our newsletter for new perspectives on the ways history continues to resonate in the present. Explore our archive of thousands of original op-eds and curated stories from around the web. Join us to learn more about the past, now.

Boomer course closes generation gap

Are you feelin' groovy? Do you remember when you didn't trust anybody over 30? Does the word "plastics" bring to mind Dustin Hoffman?
If you're a baby boomer, you'll probably get this. And now, so will some college kids.

They're the first group of students at American University taking a class called "Talking About My Parents' Generation: Understanding Baby Boomers and How They've Shaped Us."

Communication professor Leonard Steinhorn's honors class, wrapping up its first semester, is a multimedia and interdisciplinary approach to studying the history, psychology and sociology of the generation born between 1946 and 1964 and how boomers are portrayed in media. The course is an amalgam of images, books and other readings of the time, along with lots of facts and figures. Course credit is in history (yes, it is history to them) or communication.

Students get more than a glimpse in the rearview mirror. YouTube videos and clips from seminal movies, TV shows and commercials help the Internet generation forget their 21st-century mind-set and see the world through a different lens.
Read entire article at USA Today