Cultural Identity Reflection Paper
Assignment Description
BASIC GUIDELINES/EXPECTATIONS
This assignment is worth 200 points
This paper needs to be 6-7 well-written and concise pages that draws on a minimum of 3 academic sources.
IMPORTANT DATES:
Cultural Identity Papers will be due on Monday, May 24, 2021 by 11:59 pm
DETAILS:
This assignment provides an opportunity for you to reflect on and apply the concepts discussed in class to a particular issue or question regarding intercultural communication in your life. For this assignment I am asking you to reflect on your intersecting cultural identities and the experiences you have had with intercultural communication, demonstrating critical reflection and invoking readings from class to support your observations. This assignment should thoughtfully and innovatively demonstrate the ways you understand your identity and social location. Please plan to write this paper as a well-developed academic journal entry meant to provide the instructor with a sense of your individual identity and how it influences (or is influenced by) communication.
To begin generating some ideas, consider:
How has a particular cultural institution (e.g., education, religion, family) shaped your identity? What is the role of communication (or discourse, more broadly) in facilitating this identity work? In what ways have you, potentially resisted? What happened?
Describe a memorable intercultural encounter when your own cultural identity became particularly pronounced/apparent. What did the interaction look like? What, additionally, made it intercultural? What did you learn? How has it influenced future interactions/encounters? Be critical and reflective of your behaviors/observations.
How have mediated representations of difference (e.g., stereotypical representations of gender, race, sexuality, etc.) influenced how you understand your identity? Do you find these representations oppressive, empowering? How have you resisted dominant categories or essentializing notions of who you should be? If appropriate, describe a communicative interaction where you felt the power of these cultural norms.
After considering each of these prompts, please select one to which you will respond.
For the purposes of this assignment, plan to situate your discussion within an interpretive-critical theoretical framework. In doing so, you should strive for a balance between description and critical reflection. You are writing/reflecting under the assumption that communication shapes and influences culture in powerful ways. Using yourself as a text/artifact, consider the ways in which your cultural identity has been shaped by particular kinds of communication. An “A” paper will demonstrate that you can draw specific concepts from the course material and apply them meaningfully in order to analyze and assess communication’s impact on your identity and social location.
Your critical reflection paper should be between 6-7 pages excluding a words cited page (no more, no less). You should plan to cite a minimum of three sources (consider drawing on the readings from class to get you started the textbook can count as one source). Your final document should have 1 margins and be typed in 12-point Times New Roman font; double-spaced. Please plan to submit this online on Monday, May 24 by 11:59 pm. All assignments received after this time will be considered late and receive a score of 0.
