"(Re-/Un-)Writing the Identity"

"(Re-/Un-)Writing the Identity"

What is writing to the identity? What is the identity to writing? Do we write within binaries and borders, and what are the implications of doing so? During this workshop, we will explore and play with the relationship between identity and language, with a focus on gender identity, through a series of interactive creative experiments that will challenge us to cross borders in the way that we view the role of identity in our lives, our writing processes, and our communities. One of the central aims of the workshop is that we raise our awareness of our own writing by engaging in activities that will raise our awareness of the associative power and performative nature of language. It is both a philosophical, rhetorical, and technical workshop in that our study of identity will occur simultaneously with our study of our own language habits and uses. Students will design their own identity and language experiment by the end of the workshop but there is no final goal of the workshop except to arrive at a new entryway into our own relationship with language. This workshop is for anyone with an interest in language and/or anyone who has ever identified with or shirked an identity label.

Taught by Jessica Lake Mason, scholar
Just Buffalo Writing Center 4:30 - 5:30
Dates: March 21 & 23, 2017

*This workshop is for teenagers ages 12-18