Elsa Davidson is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Montclair State University in New Jersey. Her research focuses on processes of aspiration formation and social reproduction among youth from diverse class, racial, and ethnic backgrounds. In particular, Dr. Davidson is interested in how young people forge aspirations in relation to experiences of schooling, rapid social and economic transformation, and their exposure to emergent ideals of citizenship in the contemporary United States. She is the author of The Burdens of Aspiration: Schools, Youth, and Success in the Divided Social Worlds of Silicon Valley (New York University Press, 2011) from which this talk is drawn. She has also published articles in American Anthropologist, Environment & Planning A, and Ethnography.

The Urban Studies is a research cluster of the Institute for Humanities Research, which has provided staff support for this event.  Sponsored by the UC Humanities Network.