Personal and Social Identity

To begin, listen to Caroline McHugh’s inspiring TEDx Talk as you contemplate your own personal identity and self-concept:

The campus mental health literacy resource, Transitions (Kutcher, 2019) provides first-year university students with information on topics including time management, relationships, sexual activity, mental illness, suicide, and addictions. Access this online resource to read more about Identity.

Considering the complexity of identity and how charged identity politics can be, we will explore cultural identity through a social constructionism perspective. Tammera Stokes Rice (2021) looks at how race, gender, sexuality, and ability have been socially constructed over time in her article, Social Construction of Cultural Identity:

“We can get a better understanding of current cultural identities by unpacking how they came to be. By looking at history, we can see how cultural identities that seem to have existed forever actually came to be constructed for various political and social reasons and how they have changed over time.”

Additional Resources:

• University of Michigan. (n.d.). Social Identity Wheel. Inclusive Teaching. https://sites.lsa.umich.edu/inclusive-teaching/social-identity-wheel/

Lakehead Specific:

• Student Health and Wellness | Lakehead University
• Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity and Gender Expression | Lakehead University
• Pride | Lakehead University
• Lakehead University Student Union