Topic 4: Changing Identities

When you went home for Thanksgiving, chances are you had some sort of encounter with family or friends that revealed how your identity may be shifting or changing since you came to college. (This can often prove traumatic for our loved ones, as they usually prefer us to stay the same, since they know how to deal with us that way.)

Please reflect on how your identity may be changing, or on an aspect of your identity that, while it's not a change, may be something about yourself that you never noticed so clearly before until you left your home for a while and then returned to it. Please post by midnight on Saturday, Dec. 1.

Topic 3: Identity & Collectives

In his essay On Being Black and Middle Class, Shelby Steele wrote, "It seems to me that when we identify with any collective we are basically identifying with images that tell us what it means to be a member of that collective. Identity is not the same thing as the fact of membership in a collective; it is, rather, a form of self-definition, facilitated by images of what we wish our membership in the collective to mean. In this sense, the images we identify with may reflect the aspirations of the collective more than they reflect reality, and their content can vary with shifts in those aspirations." [p. 737, italicise my own]

Step 1: Read the above several times. It contains some pretty heady thoughts, and you'll need to read it consciously to really understand it.
Step 2: Think about some groups/collectives that you belong to.
Step 3: Respond to one/some of the following questions: How is your identity shaped by your membership in a particular collective? What images does your collective associate with, and what aspirations do these images reflect? How does your identity vary from or conflict with the aspirations of a collective to which you belong?

Please post your responses by 11:55 p.m. on Wednesday, October 31.

Topic 1: Identity-Culture Clash

We are identified by many things: our accent, language, nickname, favourite band, dress style, likes and dislikes, the team we support, our ethnic group, country of origin, family background and history, school, religion, or political beliefs. Official documents like birth certificates, travel passes and passports authenticate our public identity, giving us certain rights, denying us others. Because we identify ourselves with certain cultural groups (and are identified by others in terms of our membership in certain groups), we may experience "culture clash," or conflict resulting from our cultural identities. For this blog assignment, I want you to discuss one of the following : 1. Desbribe a time when your identity/membership in a cultural group created a problem for you. Did you face discrimination, resistance, or ridicule? Why? It's not enough to describe the problem: try to help us (and you) understand the underlying issues. 2. Describe a time when someone else's identity/membership in a cultural group caused you to act in a certain way. Did you discriminate, respect, or ridicule someone? Why? Again, analyze the underlying issues. Please post by Saturday, Sep. 29, at 3:00 p.m.