Identity

I'm working on my presentation now, and I remembered that I wanted to post an initial introduction over here. When I first applied to graduate school, I wrote a statement saying that I wanted to study identity. Yeah, I was rejected from most places. And it feels silly to title a post with identity and to say that I am going to be talking about the shifts and flows of our sexual and academic identities in my talk, but that is what I am going to do.

I am an Assistant Professor of Rhetoric and Professional Writing at the University of Hartford, where I am also Director of First-Year Reading and Writing. Next year, I will become Director of Gender Studies. I'm really excited about that one. I have an eclectic background: an MA in Women's Studies and an MA in Comparative Cultural Studies, both from Ohio State, and an PhD in English from the University of Illinois at Chicago. In my academic life, I have been all over the place and taken on various identities.

I have been out for the entirety of my adult life, sometimes wavering between identifying as queer and gay, which I will discuss in my talk. Right now, I'm pretty much living the privileged, middle-class life.

One of the things I want to spend some time talking about is the idea of shame and how that shapes who we are. I will borrow from Michael Warner on this. Perhaps I'll just post the notes for my talk this weekend?

At any rate, there's a little of who I am. Though my identities shift over time, I don't think much will change by next Wednesday!