ASSIGNMENT II: UNDERSTANDING AND EXPLORING DIVERSE CULTURAL IDENTITIES
INSTRUCTIONS
This assignment gives you the opportunity to explore a member with cultural identities different from your own, that may be unfamiliar to you.
PROCEDURE AND FORMAT: Select a person with at least three different cultural identities from you. The categories are: ability, age (early adulthood 21-34, early middle age 35-44, late middle age 45-64, late adulthood 65-84, very late adulthood 85 and older), ethnicity, gender, race, religion (different denominations within the same religion do not count), sex, and sexual orientation. You should spend at least 90 minutes speaking with your interview subject. The paper cannot include everything that you learned from the interview, so you must select the ideas, information, and quotations from the interview to make an interesting and coherent paper. Your paper should be comprehensive and should not be in question/answer format. Like any paper, you should have an introduction/overview, a descriiptive narrative, and a summary that includes a personal reflection.
Your final paper should include the following sections.
INTRODUCTION/OVERVIEW
Introduce your reader to the person you interviewed. Who did you select for your interview? Why did you choose this person? How are your cultural identities different? Elaborate enough to show the contrast. How did you prepare for your interview? Where did the interview take place? How long did it last? How did you create a safe space? What made it so, or what didn’t? What did you already know about this person’s identities? How easy or difficult was it to ask the questions and have a conversation about their cultural identities? Why? Did you feel comfortable or uncomfortable during your interview? Why? How do you think the other person felt? What gave you that impression? What verbal and nonverbal cues were present? Be specific in your paper.
DESCRIPTIVE ANALYSIS
Write an analysis about what you learned as a visitor to the other person’s identities. In talking to your interviewee, you may ask them to consider some of these questions: What part of your identity do you think most people notice first about you? What part of your identity are you most/least comfortable sharing with others? What part of your identity are you most proud of? What part of your identity is most important to you?Based on your research and your interview, what were some of the things you learned about the other person’s identities that surprised you or you found fascinating? Here’s your opportunity to share what you learned about the other person’s identities. Include information from your references. For example, some cultural traditions, beliefs and values.
Next, explain what you learned about yourself, your biases, your assumptions, your limitations as a person with different identities than your interviewee. What did you learn about your interviewee’s worldview? How did this compare to some of the concepts learned in class? How did this interview help you become aware of your own worldview? Did you find some similarities or sharp contrasts? For example, did you notice that your own worldview began to expand a bit as you learned about another person’s identities? What about your openness to differences? Did you notice any personal biases/assumptions that got in your way? How did you overcome them to stay nonjudgmental to your interviewee and maintain a safe space? Consider the applicability of some of the concepts that you are learning in class.
