2013
In Your Face: The Self in the Digital Age

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Who am I? Who are we?, and as Sherry Turkle has recently suggested, Who am we?  These enduring existential questions concerning one’s own identity and the very nature of human identity—how we think of ourselves, how we perceive our place in society and the world, how we view others and their relationship to us—remain mutable concepts, which change not only over time but also with the changing times and evolving religious beliefs, social mores, and philosophical theories. Revolutionary scientific breakthroughs and technological advances have powerfully changed and continue to reshape our culture, our sense of self, and most aspects of human life, especially our understanding, definitions, and perceptions of identity, but are we any better equipped to answer these fundamental existential questions?

How do we define, describe, and manage our identity/ies? What makes an individual different than all others? How does one define oneself vis-a-vis another? How do we encounter the other? How do we encounter the unknown? How have we traditionally mediated difference? In what ways does technology help us classify ourselves and other people? How have technological advances changed the way we perceive others and their identities?

Or are our identities constructed for us by external forces? How are technologies changing the ways people define themselves and present themselves to others? What roles do avatars and online identities play in terms of self-identity?


Faculty Members of the '13 Humanities Super Seminar:
Prof. Stacie Raucci, Dept. of Classics                                                     
Prof. Erika M Nelson, Dept of Modern Languages  / German Studies                           
Prof. Fernando Orellana, Digital Art / Visual Arts    

       
Student Assignment: Create a two-minute video (recorded at home via webcam) and post it to your webpage on this Weebly site. Choose a performance medium in which to express your identities. Sing a song, speak a poem, give a simple speech, dance, do anything you like that will express your self on screen.