Writing Identity

Writing Identity

College Writing, L59 1504

What defines who we are and who we may become? How do class, gender, race, sexuality, and other social forces shape our identities? In what ways are our identities inherent or constructed, claimed or ascribed? In this course, we explore these and similar questions through the work of creative and critical writers, artists, and thinkers. We study key concepts such as double consciousness, intersectionality, and performativity. We consider how social dynamics, power, and privilege affect the language we use and the lives we live. All along, through writing and research assignments and class discussions, we examine and interpret visual, literary, and critical texts in an effort to define, together, what identity is and why it matters.

In The News

Reading the Visual

Student research papers from Writing Identity are featured in this REMAKE project on close reading.

Check out the project

Campbell named 2022 Outstanding Writing Instructor

Tarrell Campbell took home the award for Outstanding Writing Instructor at the 2022 First Year Finale.

Research Tips from Researching Identity Panelists

Panelists gave tips for dealing with the unexpected, managing your time, and making sources work for you.

Read the panelists' advice

Researching Identity: A panel discussion

After discussing the influence their backgrounds have had on their research, panelists gave tips, advice and insights on conducting and writing academic research.

Watch the panel recording

Theme Readings

"Had we no memory, we never shou'd have any notion of causation, nor consequently of that chain of causes and effects, which constitute our self or person." - David Hume

"It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others, of measuring one's soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity." - W.E.B. Dubois

 

 

"The act that one does the act that one performs is in a sense an act that has been going on before one arrived on the scene Hence gender is an act which has been rehearsed much as a script survives the particular actors who make use of it" -Judith Butler

"As a result, Black women-the class of employees which, because of its intersectionality, is best able to challenge all forms of discrimination-are essentially isolated and often required to fend for themselves." - Kimberle Crenshaw

Faculty

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Tarrell Campbell

Assistant Dean in College of Arts & Sciences

314-935-4938

Dr. Campbell is a native St. Louisan. In addition to teaching in the College Writing Program, he works with several online and local organizations as a copywriter, editor, and content publisher.