Growing Up Star Wars

200 Level - appropriate for FY students - Anakin Skywalker. Padmé Amidala. Jin Erso. Han Solo. The names of STAR WARS characters infiltrate modern American culture. But have you thought about what it really means to grow up as a Jedi knight? Or to study at a political academy so that you can become queen by age fourteen? Or, more extreme still, to enlist for military service when you're not yet sixteen? The STAR WARS galaxy offers may routes to children and young adults to educate themselves in a chosen profession, exploring the positive and negative impacts that such an education can create for a society. In this way, STAR WARS participates in the genre of the bildungsroman, a story about the formative years shaping a person as they grow up. In this class, we will focus on the coming of age stories for characters in the STAR WARS galaxy, both reading novels and watching films, to emphasize how psychological, moral, ethical, and spiritual developments shape these characters on their journeys into maturity, on their journeys to becoming forces on their own planets and in the galaxy at large. On the way, we will also tackle questions of gender, race, equality, environmentalism, and age, studying how these issues contribute to the personalities that the STAR WARS universe creates. Weekly writing assignments, presentations, and a final project will comprise the majority of work for this class. Fulfills HU distribution. Also offered through Education.