UNT's First Cultural Identity Forum | Communication Studies
March 3, 2016

UNT's First Cultural Identity Forum

The first Cultural Identity Form for COMM 3620 went very well. Everyone had a great time and had a chance to learn about their culture and the culture of their peers. Dr. Karen Anderson-Lain and Britany Hale, instructors for COMM 3620, hosted this forum. Many different projects were presented, ranging from straight-forward to creatively engaging and interactive projects. Collages, tri-folds, posters, sculptures, slideshows, videos, and other multimedia projects were among the few displayed at the forum. We are looking forward to another Cultural Identity Forum during the upcoming summer sessions and next spring semester.

This student project does a great job of exploring ways in which we ascribe identity to others. The student posted pictures of himself and asked the audience attending the fair to to indicate what identity they ascribed to him based on their perceptions. He asked them to vote on age, religion, sexual orientation, ethnicity, race, etc.

This student created a piece entitled "Missing Piece" to demonstrate how identity is dynamic. As she explains in the description the overall stained glass design demonstrates the way in which faith influences all aspects of her identity. She highlights the relative importance of her identity with color images being more crucial or central to her identity. Additionally, this explores the ways we both choose and are ascribed identity by grouping aspect of her identity she self select on the right and those identities ascribed to her by others on the left.

Click here for a video of the forum and here for an album of photos from the event!