In Unit I, you were presented with the question "How do I know who I am?" Through various readings and classroom discussions both your own sense of self and that of your generation were carefully scrutinized. In essence, by looking at this question you were pursuing the concept of identity, both on a particular/personal level as well as generally (your generation, and your relationship to it).

In Unit III, you will be expanding this understanding of identity and developing the ability to understand the importance and presence of this concept in different social contexts. The texts and discussions of week four will challenge you to look again at the shape of personal identity and consider how it is affected by looking both inward and outward. You will also be asked to analyze how identity emerges and comment on that emergence (as well as its repression) in many geographic, cultural, and temporal locations.

The Return of Martin Guerre will be a constant presence as the various analytic tools are being gathered and developed during week four. In this story many questions of identity are in play. Look closely at (among other things) particular characters, the impact of gender, the relationships between individuals and groups to their society (both on a micro and macro level), and the influence of culture and nation. As you become involved in this history make sure to use it as a sounding board for the ideas and concepts that emerge when reading the other texts, especially the more theoretical ones. Given the theoretical texts and your own exploration through reflection and classroom discussion, consider why the renaissance and enlightenment periods are wonderfully rich staging grounds for pursuing questions of identity.

Along with Martin Guerre and the western civilization texts, we will start the week with an overview by Roy Porter. In this introduction, Porter will bring many of the texts you have been reading (and will be reading) into view. He concentrates on the "composition" of self and how it has been constructed while paying careful attention to the many social constructs that impact identity. These themes also take center stage in the essay by Marilyn Frye, as she turns a discerning eye on the persistence of social constructs and their power to shape the identities of individuals and groups. Ursula Le Guin, in a fictional piece, and Kate Bornstein in a much more direct fashion, will attempt to turn these constructs upside down, forcing the reader to confront several traditionally held assumptions.

In the middle of the week the work of Sigmund Freud is introduced, both through the texts as well as a lecture by Dr. Debra Bergoffen. Here the focus will be turned inward as we follow Freud's exploration of the subconscious and how it shapes who we are. Allow Freud's dialog to reverberate through your examination of the construction and emergence of identity in the personal experiences of Kitty Tsui, Bei Dao and Gish Jen, and also as you reflect back on the movie "Vertigo."

You may want to attempt a momentary bracketing of your personal conceptions of identity in order to approach the various challenges to its emergence in other cultures (for instance, "To Live" is an excellent example of the struggle to maintain a sense of identity during radical cultural shifts). It may be efficacious to allow that bracketing to continue as we close the week with Mircea Eliade and Li Liu considering how our links to the past, both literal and transcendental, can have a tremendous impact on identity.

Online Texts

Li Liu: Who Were the Ancestors?
(retrieve from Expanded Academic Database, via the GMU Library web site Databases page)

An ii Interview with Visiting Artist Bei Dao: Poet in exile
(If this link doesn't work, copy and paste the following URL:
http://www.umich.edu/~iinet/journal/vol2no1/v2n1_Bei_Dao.html)