The Honors College and the College of Sciences and Humanities are doing something different with the Emens Lecture Series by presenting a symposium of student work.
The Constructing Identities Symposium will take place Thursday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m at the Student Center. It offers four events that will explore how people view their own identity and the identity of others, Assistant Professor of History Timothy Berg said. There will also be a free lunch from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m.
"People who come to the symposium will learn how we construct identities of others, how identity formation is performed and how we understand it," Berg said.
This year the College of Sciences and Humanities hosted the Emens Lecture Series. In Spring 2008, Dean Michael Maggiottoapproached Dean James Ruebel of the Honors College and they formed co-sponsorship.
"We found that it fit perfectly with the types of classes we do routinely at the Honors College, the Honors Colloquium," Ruebel said.
Members of the student council at the College of Sciences and Humanities came up with the theme Constructing Identities, and deans Maggiotto and Ruebel sought four teachers who would incorporate this theme into their Honors classes. Participants include Lucinda Woodward of the psychology department, Jeffrey Brackett of thereligious studies department, Frank Felsenstein of the English department and Berg of the history department.
Berg's Honors Photography class will present prints and slide shows during the segment called "Photography, Visual Culture and Identity." Besides showing off their posters about identity, the students will illustrate why portraits are not always the best portrayal of a person's true emotions.
Sophomore Alivia Bryak said the class learned about how people perceive themselves and others. She said she believes participants will gain a better understanding of themselves and why they do what they do.
"The class experimented with how people experience true emotion," Bryak said. "During a part of our segment, we are going to try to get people to let their guard down and capture a portrait of them showing their emotion."
Junior Riley Paulsen said he hopes this presentation will help people view photography in a new light.
"Since I'm a graphics major, I work with photos, but usually I don't have time to take my own," Paulsen said. "This was a fun project because I could do more with the artsy side of photography instead of the technical side."
By bringing in two guest speakers earlier in the year and focusing primarily on student work, Ruebel said they are getting more "bang for their buck."
Doug Jones, an actor and Ball State alumnus, gave a presentation about his own quest for identity to kick off the lecture series in the fall. This spring, Sander Gilman, a distinguished professor of liberal arts and sciences at Emory College, gave a speech about the connection between beauty and self-identity.
"In the past," Ruebel said, "a high percentage of the budget has been spent on a speaker who meets with faculty, individual classes and offers a big lecture, but we wanted to span it out."
Even though this will be a one-time event, Ruebel said it would have an afterlife. A DVD will be made with clips of the day's events, and all the written material from the event will be available as PDFs on the DVD. Ruebel said it will be circulated, and some students are likely to take their presentations to interdisciplinary conferences around the country.
"I think it's been a great project, and students in the four classes have been fully engaged," Ruebel said.
Schedule of Thursday's events10 - 11 a.m.: Personality and the Psychology of Identity Formation11 - 11:30 a.m.: Ethnography of Religion, Self and Other11:30 a.m. - 1 p.m.: Photography, Visual Culture and Identity1 - 2 p.m.: Constructions of Otherness11:30 a.m. - 1 p.m.: Free lunch provided
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