Autoethnography Paper
CLSA 2800: Race and Ethnicity in the Ancient Mediterranean World
Autoethnography is a genre of writing that links the personal to the cultural, positioning the self within a social context. An autoethnographic narrative not only traces a personal history, but also portrays the cultural and social context within which this life unfolds. Saidiya Hartmans Lose Your Mother is an example of autoethnography in which the author tells her personal story within the context of the North American slave trade and its impact on herself and her ancestors.
In this paper, you will offer an account of yourself in relationship to the social, political, and cultural forces of the world in which you live. This paper probably works best if it is written in the first person with anecdotal illustrations of how you experience those social, political, and cultural forces. The goal is not simply to write an autobiography, but to use your experience as a critical interpreter of the contemporary moment, and as the product (though maybe not an obvious one) of a convergence of different histories and identities. You may find it useful to look back at your racial-ethnic identity development worksheet and consider thoughts, memories, and feelings that came up when filling it out.
You might for instance consider your familys place in the history of immigration in the U.S., or the history of the North American slave trade, or the history of a particular city or town. How do your racial background and/or your ethnic or national affiliation(s), your gender and sexuality, play out in your day-to-day life? What is your interaction with the U.S. as a nation its laws, its ideology, its history? Do you find yourself thinking a lot about those affiliations or not? Why is that? What do you take for granted about your own history? Since we are not always given a lot of information about our family history, there may be strong elements of speculation or storytelling, but that, too, is okay. The idea is to get a sense of how your personal experiences and history are framed, formed, and affected by larger social forces, particularly (but not exclusively) at the level of race and nation. This can be as artful and personally affected as you like indeed it should not be a rote rendition of identity categories or simple narrative of facts. I would like to see you critically engage your own experience, as well as the larger institutions and histories that inform and intersect with that experience.
Instructions:
o The paper should not just be a list of all the possible identities and forms of privilege and/or marginalization that you can have. Pick a specific identity or cluster of identities and focus on them.
o Your race and/or ethnicity should be considered in the paper, although it need not be the main focus
o For example: you might choose to focus on your experience as a gay man, disabled woman, non-binary person of color, child of immigrants, first-generation college student, etc.
o Consider how your chosen identities related to other identities you might have
o For example, if you want to focus on being an LGBT student at the University of Iowa, how do factors like your race or socio-economic status affect your experience?
o Your intro paragraph should introduce the identity/identities you are going to discuss and the particular social context you are going to discuss them in
o Your thesis statement should tell me how your identity/identities have influenced your experience in this particular social context
o Include personal anecdotes as examples
Your paper should be 3-5 pages long, double-spaced, with 1-inch margins and Times New Roman font. Citations from assigned readings are not necessary but may be used if they are relevant. No bibliography or works cited page is necessary unless you cite materials not assigned for this class. Your paper should have an introduction and conclusion, and a clear, specific thesis statement (see rubric below for more details).
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