Length<\/b>: \u00a0roughly equivalent to 1000 words,\u00a0adjusted for the media you\u00a0choose to use<\/p>\n
Due Dates<\/strong>: \u00a08.12.15 (concept\/proposal\/rough draft<\/em>), 8.13.15 (final<\/strong> draft<\/strong>)<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n We started this course with the difficult task of self-representation,\u00a0and that’s where we’ll conclude. \u00a0We’ve spent some time discussing various ways of representing the self: \u00a0talking explicitly about oneself to introduce oneself to others, narrating personal experiences, articulating some personally important belief.<\/p>\n More recently, we’ve talked about the perhaps surprising complexity of the self: \u00a0although we view our identities as stable, individual, and self-contained, they are in fact shifting, elusive, plural, socially conditioned, often shaped and influenced by\u00a0context and circumstance. \u00a0We like to imagine that underneath all the masks we wear to perform versions of our selves appropriate to particular contexts\u00a0(in class, with our families, with our friends, with people we just met, etc.), there exists some true, stable, internal identity belonging to and created only by ourselves. \u00a0But what if the masks we wear are<\/i>\u00a0our faces, in aggregate? \u00a0What if the sum total of the identities we perform is, in fact, the most stable and accurate version of our identity?<\/p>\n This last assignment embraces the dizzying instability and complexity of our identities and our sense of self. \u00a0When I asked you to write me a letter introducing yourself to me, the only guidance I gave you about what to include was that you should tell me whatever you wanted me to know or thought I should know. \u00a0In other words, I was implicitly asking you to be rhetorically aware about your expression of self\u2014to think about what version of yourself you wanted to present to me at the start of the class and at the start of your college life. \u00a0Here, though, I want to get some sense not just of who you are or how you want to be seen in the narrow context of your English class, but of this more plural, dynamic sense of self we’ve begun trying to articulate in recent classes. \u00a0I want to get a sense of who you are in a number of different spaces and contexts, of the ways those selves fit together (sometimes neatly, sometimes not so neatly), of the hybrid self that resides in the spaces between these other selves. \u00a0I want to see you confronting the multiplicity of selves you manage day in and day out.<\/p>\n You should think not just about what remains constant about your identity when you shift from space to space, but about what changes<\/em>. \u00a0How are you a different person in your home town than you are at Penn State, or in this class vs. another class you might be taking concurrently? \u00a0How are you a different person with your family than you are with your friends or your classmates? \u00a0How are you a different person in the summer vs. the winter, indoors vs. outdoors, during the week vs. on the weekend? \u00a0How are you different when you’re alone vs. when you’re with other people? \u00a0When you’re speaking English vs. another language? \u00a0When you’re the best version of yourself vs. the worst version of yourself? \u00a0The argument of this unit is that rather than obscuring your true inner self, these various other selves are all part of you\u2014not superficial disguises, but facets of a self that is complex and multiple.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Because this assignment asks you to pluralize your own sense of identity, thinking rather\u00a0of the multiple\u00a0identities you inhabit and perform from time to time and space to space, I will also ask you to pluralize your sense of composition. \u00a0The general arc of this class has been to broaden our sense of communication\u00a0and composition\u00a0beyond the printed word, to include and account for numerous other forms of expression. \u00a0We’ve discussed how part of writing in the 21st century is being fluent and articulate in a number of different modes and forms\u2014not just writing an essay or a letter, but an email, a text, a tweet, a selfie, a podcast, and so on. \u00a0In order to tackle the complexities of the hybrid self, it’s necessary for us to think about similarly hybrid forms of composition.<\/p>\n What this means is that for this assignment, you should broaden your sense of writing beyond the essay form you know so well. \u00a0We construct, express, and articulate ourselves in many other genres and media forms beyond the written essay, so it makes sense to rope those forms into the task of self-representation at the heart of this assignment. \u00a0You are, of course, a different version of yourself when you write an academic essay than you are when you compose in other contexts and media forms; in this way, the form and the content of this assignment are both after the same thing.<\/p>\n Accordingly, your final product should include at least two<\/strong>\u00a0different media forms in addition to text: \u00a0photography, drawing, painting, collage, comics, video, audio, etc. \u00a0Even text might fall into any number of possible categories: \u00a0essayistic prose, poetry, fictional or nonfictional narrative, lists, a journal, a letter to yourself or someone else, and so on. \u00a0Some of it might be typed, some of it handwritten, some of it typed and printed and then digitally photographed. \u00a0Think about how different media forms might fit different parts of your identity, different areas of your life, different aspects of your personality.<\/p>\n This is an experimental form, to fit the experimental nature of these conversations about self and identity (and, indeed, the experimental nature of identity in general\u2014always provisional, always fumbling toward some fuller expression of itself). \u00a0If you feel that you can’t draw your way out of a paper bag, for instance, don’t let that stop you from trying, if you feel that drawing is an appropriate component to include in your hybrid self-portrait; the point here is not artistic perfection but interesting and creative expression\u00a0across different media forms. \u00a0If writing about ourselves is one way we bring into being that thing we call a self, what does that process look like in the 21st century, now that various media forms are significantly more accessible to amateur users? \u00a0For many years, people have used self-portraiture, self-photography, memoir, and autobiography to express and articulate their sense of self. \u00a0What options for hybrid, cross-media self-expression are available to us now, and how might they better fit our complex understanding of self and identity?<\/p>\n
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