SO 220 - Storying the Self

Credits: 4
This class considers how a sense of self is shaped through the stories we tell about the experiences we go through at different stages of our lives. Taking the life course as a model, the course traces how practices of self-storying begin with birth and childhood, extend through adolescence, adulthood, marriage, professional life, education, family, retirement and finally in death. At each stage the narrative form of the life course is read against the backdrop of the social forces that shape it, including capitalism and labor, gender identity and the body, trauma and racial inequality, ability and the medicalization of health, and so on. Throughout, the course showcases rebels and innovators who shape their own life stories in employment, sexuality and intimacy, community and bodily life.

Liberal Arts Perspective(s): Social and Psychology