In this class, you will critically examine what it means to be an adult in the 21st century. This course will ask the following questions: How is adulthood marked and/or celebrated? What defines adulthood and how might these definitions differ when one considers gender, race, sexuality, socioeconomic status, etc.? Currently, young people (those in their late teens through their late twenties (and even early thirties)) are often accused of having an “extended adolescence.” The reasons for this prolonged process of maturation have been linked to parental influence, affluence, rising cost of college tuition, the decline in service-based jobs, etc. But perhaps the very idea of extended adolescence is merely a myth. Maybe those facing adulthood are reshaping the very definition of what it means to be “grown up” in innovative and meaningful ways.