Children’s Studies Minor Requirements

Required Foundation Courses

  • Interdisciplinary Introduction to Children’s Studies (3 credits, taught every fall)
  • Children’s Studies Senior Seminar (1 credit, open to junior and senior minors; taught every spring)


Core Requirements

At least 2 courses from the following list (updated in Fall 2022). Minors declared beginning in Fall 2023 will need to take their two core courses from two different home departments, which are noted in parentheses.

  • The American School (Education)
  • Cultural History of the American Teenager (English)
  • Developmental Psychology (Psychological & Brain Sciences)
  • Education, Childhood, Adolescence and Society (Education)
  • History of the Golden Age of Children's Literature (English)
  • Psychology of Adolescence (Psychological & Brain Sciences)


Elective Courses

Students may select their remaining credits from a long list of elective courses. New options appear almost every semester, but over the past three years our electives have included the following:
 

  • Abnormal Child Psychology
  • African Americans and Children’s Literature
  • Anthropological Perspectives on the Fetus
  • Banned Books
  • Childhood, Culture, and Religion in Medieval Europe & the Mediterranean
  • Childhood in Greek Antiquity (first-year seminar)
  • Children and Childhood in World Religions
  • Children in the Shadow of the Swastika
  • Children of Immigrants: Identity and Acculturation
  • Children's Picture Books
  • Children's Publishing: Content and Craft
  • Children’s Studies Coursework Completed Abroad
  • The Cultural History of the American Teenager
  • The Development of Social Cognition
  • Developmental Neuropsychology
  • The Education of Black Children and Youth in the United States
  • Educational Psychology
  • Girls’ Fiction from Little Goody Two-Shoes to Nancy Drew
  • Girls' Media and Popular Culture
  • History of Education in the United States
  • Imagining and Creating Africa: Youth, Culture, and Social Change (first-year seminar)
  • Independent Work in Children’s Studies
  • The Infant Mind (sophomore seminar)
  • Internship in Children’s Studies
  • Juvenile Justice in the Black Experience
  • Narratives of Childhood
  • Neighborhoods, Schools, and Social Inequality
  • No Boys Allowed: Girlhood and Programming for Girls in the 19th and 20th Centuries United States
  • Rediscovering the Child: Interdisciplinary Workshops in an Urban Elementary/Middle School*
  • Service Learning: Feminist and Queer Youth Studies
  • Sociology of Education

Other courses not on this list may be used to fulfill the requirements of the minor, but they must be approved in advance by your Children’s Studies advisor. Please contact Dr. Anderson with any questions about this list.

Usually, courses that count toward the minor are listed or crosslisted into the L66 ChSt course designation, but a few courses in other schools (which cannot be crosslisted into L66 for technical reasons) can also count. In particular, Professor Lorberbaum's "Rediscover(ing) the Child" (A46 ARCH 316F) remains a Children's Studies minor elective even though it is now home-based in the Sam Fox School of Architecture and Urban Design. Children's Studies has also historically counted a few University College courses and occasional topic-specific seminars in Education; if you see a likely course in another school, please ask!

A Note on Double-Counting

Under Arts & Sciences policy, WU undergraduates may only "double-count" courses at the 100 and 200 levels; courses taken at the 300 level and above can only be counted toward one major or minor. Every student must have at minimum 12 independent credits toward an Arts & Sciences minor.

However, the Children's Studies minor will allow minors to substitute an elective course in Children's Studies for a 300-level core course that the student has taken but needs to count toward a different major or minor, e.g. Developmental Psychology for a Psychological and Brain Sciences major. In essence, the number of independent credits required for the Children's Studies minor remains the same, but minors in this situation have more choices for those three credits.