COA tries hard to be an accepting and open community. We think a lot, both individually and collectively, about what makes up identities, how they change, and how to consider and handle difference. There are a host of moral and ethical questions: What should we do with the identities we have? Do we determine our identities, or do our identities determine us? How can we cross gulfs of gender, sexuality, race, class, ethnicity, nationality, and religion to create community?
Claiming identities but resisting labels
And then there’s the personal, the embodied reality. No matter what you study or teach, you still have to find a way to inhabit, assemble, recognize, and maintain a personal identity and sense of self. Finding coherence can be a challenge. How do you experience gender, race, ethnicity, culture, and class? Do they constrain or empower you?
Follow your questions, find your contexts
Study gender and identity through education and psychology, anthropology and literature, history and philosophy. Courses like Sex, Gender, Identity, and Power, Adolescent Psychology, and Feminist Theory in a Transnational Frame enable students and faculty to work with feminist and queer theory, race and ethnicity, questions about individuality, and structures of social power.