Identities
                                                      First Year Seminar 242, Fall 2000

Charles V. Carnegie       Office Hours:
157 & 217 Pettengill Hall      M: 3 - 4
e-mail: ccarnegi / phone 6079     T: 4 - 6

This seminar exposes students to the central idea that our collective and corporate selves, "identities," are socially fashioned.  We examine the raw materials out of which notions of identity are formed, fixed, and made to appear timeless.  A variety of social identities are explored in the seminar including gender, class, so-called "race," and ethnicity.  We look at how these are given meaning through language and other forms of representation, how they are learned in course of socialization, performed through social and personal rituals, and how they are policed and enforced through various everyday practices.  We consider the ambiguity created by overlapping identity categories, as well as the negotiation of multiple identities.  We seek to locate and to articulate, moreover, the contextual settings in which identities are shaped and lived out in all their cultural and historical variety.

                                                            Assignments and Grades

Research and writing assignments are intended to have you think both introspectively and in wider social terms about questions of identity.  Each of these assignments will be discussed more fully in class.

1.  A short (three-page) introspective essay on personal "identity:" an essay that places you in social terms, describes who you are, not simply in terms of individual characteristics of personality or experience, but that positions you socially.  Due 9/12.

2.  A short analytical paper (three to five pages) based on ethnographic observations and interviews on some aspect of self-presentation, position, and place.  Due 9/28.

3.  Group research project.  The class will be divided into three groups, each of which will look at one of the following general issues: 1) Class and Identity, 2) Representations of "Whiteness," and, 3) Alliances in Contemporary Social Movements.  This project will entail meeting with your team members on a weekly basis (mostly outside of class time) to narrow and define the group's research focus, divide responsibilities among members of the team, discuss what each person is finding out, and plan the group's class presentation.  Oral presentations are scheduled for October 31.  Besides the presentations in class, each team member is expected to write a short (3-5 pp) report describing the nature of her/his contribution to the overall effort, and summarizing what was learned from the project.  These individual written reports are due 11/2.

4.  An analytical paper that probes some aspect of your family's identity, building on essay # 1 though involving interviews or other research strategies.  (Your paper should be approximately 10 pages, double spaced.  Due 11/30.)

5.  Each student is required to keep a reading and class response journal from which s/he may be asked to share observations with the class from time to time.  I will look at your journals periodically in course of the semester.

Regular class attendance and active participation are important and will be taken into account in your final grade.

                                                Books Available from the Bates Bookstore

Stuart Hall (ed.), Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices
Jan Ellen Lewis, & Peter S. Onuf (eds.), Sally Hemmings and Thomas Jefferson: History,  Memory, and Civic Culture
Nathan Rutstein, Healing Racism in America (late order)
Margery Wolf, The House of Lim

                                            Class Meetings / Reading Assignments

9/7 Introductions and course overview.

9/12 Margery Wolf, The House of Lim.
 Writing assignment # 1 due.

9/14 Wolf, The House of Lim.

9/19 Deborah Tannen, "Different Words, Different Worlds."  (Chapter 1, in Tannen, You Just Don't Understand: Women and Men in Conversation.)

 Juan Flores and George Yudice, "Living Borders/Buscando America: Languages of Latino Self-formation.

9/21 Guest presenter, Zoia Cisneros.

9/26 Erving Goffman, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, Introduction, Chapters 1, 3, and 6.

You are encouraged to attend as many sessions as possible of the symposium, "Haiti: Exploding the Myths," taking place on campus September 28 - 30.

9/28 Library orientation.  Begin reading Stuart Hall, Representation.
 Writing assignment # 2 due.

10/3 Stuart Hall, Representation, Introduction and Chapter 1, "The Work of Representation," pp. 1 - 74.

10/5 Possible class trip to New York City (October 4th or 5th - 7th).

10/10 Video in class: Representation and the Media.

10/12 Hall, Representation, Chapter 4, "The Spectacle of the ‘Other,'" pp. 223 - 290.

10/17 Sean Nixon, Chapter 5, "Exhibiting Masculinity," pp. 291 - 336, in Hall (ed.), Representation.

Fall Recess

10/24 Christine Gledhill, Chapter 6, "Genre and Gender: The Case of Soap Opera," pp. 337 - 386, in Hall (ed.), Representation.

10/26 Victor Turner, "Liminality and Communitas."  (Chapter 3, in Turner, The Ritual Process.)

Note that there will be two public lectures on campus this week that you are required to attend.
Professor Arjun Appadurai will be speaking on October 30 on some aspect of "Refugees, Displacement, and Diaspora," and Dr. Richard Nelson will deliver the annual Otis environmental studies lecture.

10/31 Group research project class presentations.

11/2 Clifford Geertz, "Person, Time, and Conduct in Bali."  (Chapter 14, in, Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures.).
 Written reports on assignment # 3 due.

11/7 Introduction and Part I, Race, Sex, and History, chapters by Lewis & Onuf, Wood, Jordan, and Morgan, pp. 1 - 84, in, Jan Ellen Lewis, and Peter S. Onuf (eds.), Sally Hemmings and Thomas Jefferson: History, Memory, and Civic Culture.

11/9 Part II, Stories and Lies, Remembering and Forgetting, chapters by Rothman, Isaac, Lewis, and Stanton & Swann-Wright, pp. 87 - 183, in, Lewis, & Onuf (eds.), Sally Hemmings and Thomas Jefferson: History, Memory, and Civic Culture.

11/14 Part III, Civic Culture, chapters by Walker, Sollors, Rakove, and Gordon-Reed, plus the Appendices, pp. 187 - 270, in, Lewis, & Onuf (eds.), Sally Hemmings and Thomas Jefferson: History, Memory, and Civic Culture.

 11/16 Screening of the video, Black Is, Black Ain't.

Thanksgiving Recess

11/28 Don Terry, "Getting Under My Skin."

11/30 Nathan Rutstein, Healing Racism in America.
 Writing assignment # 4 due.

12/5 Finish reading Rutstein, Healing Racism in America.
 Concluding discussions.