Throughout the world, writing serves to express, record and even create meaningful moments. In academic spaces, writing becomes the bridge between ourselves and the world of ideas. In this course, we provide practical insights into how to write an academic essay. We show you how to develop the academic skills needed to be a competent academic writer. You will have an opportunity to engage with texts written by academics, and to see how some of the ideas in these texts are used by students in constructing an academic essay. We address some of the challenges these students face with respect to academic writing and offer you the opportunity to practice and to develop your own writing style. For this course, we centre our lessons around a specific topic - the concept of identity, since it forms such an important feature of how we locate ourselves in an ever-changing global world. In other words, this course teaches academic writing skills through getting you to write and reflect on your understanding of identity. So if you are thinking about studying at a tertiary institution, or if you just want to brush up on your academic essay writing skills, this course is for you!
Woodward on identity: I, me and the world
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來自 University of Cape Town 的課程
Writing your World: Finding yourself in the academic space
39 個評分
從本節課中
Starting to write: Understanding definitions of identity
This week, we will consider practical aspects of academic writing, such as structure and the importance of defining key terms in an essay. The term we will focus on this week is identity. After hearing Kath Woodward’s ideas on identity, our three student writers, Ada, Ziggy, and Joey will write their own definitions of identity. Emphasising that writing is a process, we will give feedback on the students writers’ definitions. We will then provide you with the opportunity to draft your definition of identity, give feedback to other learners and receive feedback from them.
與講師見面
Gideon NomdoLecturer
Centre for Higher Education Development
Aditi HunmaLecturer
Centre for Higher Education Development
Dr. Catherine: I think it will be nice for our learners
to hear what you've got to say about identity.
So, I just wondered if you could start by telling us what you would say identity is.
Prof. Kath: Well, I think identity is particularly
important because unlike ideas of self and subject,
identity is always related to the world we live in.
It's always related to the society you live in,
and it's always about what's inside and what's outside.
It's always a connection between the I and the ME.
Identity is also beset by troubles
because we can't always secure our identity and things change.
So, it's always about some resolution between the 'I' and the 'ME' as Mead says.
How we see ourselves and how others see us.
But, it's always social.
I think that's the important thing,
that it links the individual to the world they live in.
Dr. Catherine: Okay. And so,
what's the relationship of identity and personality?
Prof. Kath: Well, I think individuals have personalities.
But what I would see as most important about identity is that
those personalities which relate to what's inside us,
what feelings we have,
what emotions we experience as well,
is that they're always connected to the world in which we live.
So for example, if you have particular kinds of personality,
if you're particularly extrovert perhaps,
you as far as possible would endeavor to secure
an identity which allows you to express that kind of personality.
But, I think where personality is located within individuals,
identities are always connected to the wider world.
I'd say everything is connected to the wider world of course. But,
I think it's the big thing about identity is that,
it gives expression to people's anxieties about how they fit into the world.
And particularly it's about relationality,
a relationship between people and between people in the world they live in.
Dr. Catherine: So, your relationship with say,
the context you're going into,
you decide almost like putting on certain attire.
Prof. Kath: Well, putting on your clothes is one good example of it because,
when you get up in the morning you think,
who am I going to be today.
However, I think we don't always make the right decision, of course.
And you go into a party,
and you pick the wrong outfit, but also,
you are constrained by what's in your cupboard,
what can you put on.
And so, it's not as simple as you and I are saying what should I wear today?
Who shall I be?
There are restrictions on how much choice we can exercise.
So I think sociologists in particular,
but actually within the social sciences and within political sciences,
people use identity to relate to how they operate within the world.
It's also about where you've come from,
what past experience you had.
Dr. Catherine: So, you're saying that identity,
what pushes it is fear.
Prof. Kath: I wouldn't start with fear actually.
I would start more positively if possible.
That it starts with questions.
Where am I in the world?
Who am I and how do I relate to this world?
And the world will impose itself on you.
It will give you a number, but you are,
we're all born into very different situations and how much scope do you have.
How much agency you have or vary.
But, what's interesting is how people share identities,
and how people make sense of who they are,
in relation to others and to the world they live in.
So, we do have hopes and dreams as well as fame.
Here's one of the things,
but hopefully, it's not only about fame.
It's about me and what I've got and where I am, where I'm born.
Where you're born is really important,
and who I am in relation to where you're going,
and what world it is you are in.
What family are born into,
what place you're born in,
and what resource your family has.
What cultural category your family would fit into,
what relationships you have with other people and you have to make your way.
Identity is really a big issue,
a big issue of how you make sense of who you are, and who we are.
Dr. Catherine: So, its how you relate to the world and how are you.
Prof. Kath: Yes, but it's always relational,
you know, you couldn't choose not to.
Well, you can try,
but I think you'd be seen as exceedingly disrelational
if you tried to exist outside the world and I'm not sure you could.
You do get the odd story of some jousters on the way and brought up by wolves.
But on the whole,
I think it has to be relational.
A two way thing between the personal and the social.
Dr. Catherine: And, any other aspect?
I mean is it just the personal and social?
Prof. Kath: No, because it is embodied.
I mean I think that's the thing which in my own recent work,
one of the things I've emphasized is the importance of bodies in the makeup of identity.
And identities are embodied and we have an embodied self,
and that's the continuity perhaps is that we do have a body.
But, we interfere with this body all the time,
you know, that that's one of the factors.
It's also something which is changing and
changes not only according to social circumstances,
but also according to the other factors in place, economy and politics.
All of these things in the world, you know,
I include those in the social and the cultural.
But, we change because we get older.
We're all aging actually,
it isn't only that grandmothers are aging.
All of us, even small babies are different from toddlers,
are different from small children,
are different from teenagers.
You know that we have to allow this life story with the social world we occupy.
Dr. Catherine: But the questions can also come in the form of,
what does it mean [inaudible] to be a woman?
Prof. Kath: Yes, exactly. Or to be a man.
Yeah. But, I mean that's what the debates about trans have really thrown up.
Once you start saying or what does it mean if you want to pass as a woman?
If you were born a man and you want to pass as a woman,
what do you need to do to pass as a woman?
And maybe it's moving in certain ways,
having your hair in a certain way,
and wearing certain kinds of clothes.
All of which are cultural things.
You know, because there are quite a lot of people,
trans people who don't have any kind of them while they might do home entry,
but they don't actually have surgery.
So, it raises questions.
And also what's appropriate in a particular culture, place,
I'm not so appropriate at a particular time
and for gender which seems as if it's fixed because,
you know, we get the blanket when we're born.
I think they still do it, i don't know, maybe not,
but they do actually on registering the birth,
you say what the child is and what whether it's male or female.
But, it's how that child behaves,
what it the child is allowed to do that is massively, enormously across cultures.
It's not just what they wear,
it's what they can learn at school.
The toys in western department stores still have girls and boys toys.
Lego is different for girls and boys.
[LAUGHTER] I speak as a grandmother and I think it's got worse,
since I had little grandchildren it's got worse.
Dr. Catherine: Yeah. It's quite funny.
This morning I happened to be working with the paper
of your in another class of mine with performing art students,
and it was a very animated discussion when some of them were explaining that they had
the African traditions say
a blessing when the first born saves them from illness and so on.
And then they join a church.
So, they become christian.
So, what happens then to their identity,
say as a Xhosa or Zulu person?
Prof. Kath: I think from the research,
this is what people do,
is they modify it,
and they might keep some of them.
They might adopt some bits.
To do this, we pick and mix.
We adopt bits, the bits of, for example,
Christianity that we can get to grips with and we can understand.
But, we keep some of the traditions,
the ones that we think are really important,
and the ones that maybe,
their activity, or the blessing,
or whatever of the little baby arriving is something
that it might be too powerful in your inside,
in the feelings and emotions of the person who has now called themselves,
has become a Christian to abandon that altogether.
So, I think what happens and that's how identities are fragmented.
But, there are also contradictory because some things don't quite fit.
But, most of us can resolve these contradictions.
We do it every day.
We do it all the time with all sorts of things.
Most of us that are a set of contradictions,
we say one thing, but we sort of do another really.
Dr. Catherine: I'm just thinking about earlier,
you spoke about the way we see ourselves.
How I identify myself might be different from how I am identified by others.
Prof. Kath: Well, I think we always have that in mind.
I think, you know, to go back to the wardrobe,
you always think about if I wear this how will I be seen
because the interview one is quite a good one,
because you're actually putting on a self for the day.
Even if you're picking something up off the floor because you don't care,
you're still saying to the world,
well, I don't care.
So, I think that how I see myself,
may actually be a bit different from how other people see me of course.
And I may get it very wrong,
and you may think that the way to be a good mother is to be very strict,
and you may find the disapproval of
all the other mothers when they're being indulgent and you're being very strict. [MUSIC]
