ENG 352 - Shifting Selves

This course aims to explore different conceptions of identity, contact, and cultural belonging. By reading various works of contemporary literature and other cultural texts from different humanities, social science, and science disciplines, it will unpack some of the ways in which identities are socially and culturally constructed. The course will study those constructions of identity in order to ask how one participates and/or does not participate in their making and how one negotiates them. Furthermore, the course will deliberate on the ways in which one’s personal identity is also constituted by one’s memories of the past. Accordingly, it will examine the relationship between what we remember and our conceptions of who we are in relation to our past selves, other people, and even digital technologies. It will also explore how one’s embodied self can both bear the inscription of the prevailing idea one’s identity and disrupt those ideas. Instead of taking individual identity as a given set of unchanging qualities, over the course of the semester the class will consider the shifting relationship among the identity, contact, and belonging.
Lecture
3 Credits
Prerequisites: ENG 120 ; ENG 212 , ENG 213 OR ENG 214 (Literature Core)
Offered in Fall, Winter & Spring Semester