Jackie Mohan
Assignments & Activities Archive
Assignment Description
In this assignment, students craft a photo essay about their identity, through which they hone basic writing skills, understand genre, and develop an understanding of voice, tone, and style. Intersectionality refers to how we can better understand each person’s lived experiences in the world by examining how the different parts of their identity interact (Crenshaw). The idea of intersectionality helps students think about which aspects of their identity feel the most defining, how those aspects relate to each other, and how to convey this to their audience. In this essay, students focus on five parts, or facets, of their identity, relying on their own unique voice and experiences. In their photo essays, students include a title, introduction section, each facet of their identity represented by a photo (may be a photo of their own or a stock photo) and written explanation, before they wrap up their essay with a concluding section.
In the written explanation for each facet, students address the following: Why is this facet an important, defining part of yourself? How does it relate to, or intersect with, other parts of your identity? How does it relate to the larger society in which you live? Consider connections to communities, culture, background, and privilege. Students should choose the facets that feel most defining at this point in their lives, such as gender identity, racial group, religion, socioeconomic class, sexual orientation, nationality, ethnicity, culture, ability/disability, language, hobbies, fandoms, family, etc. Since students are discussing their own identities, this assignment provides a venue to discuss the importance of linguistic diversity and validating students’ own voices in telling their stories (Baker-Bell). Although this essay is primarily in the genre of memoir writing, students will also find it necessary to bring in conventions of descriptive writing, definition writing, and narratives as they explain their facets and illustrate them with moments, memories, and anecdotes in this multimodal, hybrid assignment