Common Experience

"Identity in a Multicultural World: Who Am I?" is the theme for 2007-08 Common Experience. The theme will generate discussions about our identities as individuals and members of groups; competing identities; and the conflict that arises when identities clash. Our sense of how we identify ourselves is complicated, which you will learn in great detail in Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance. In Skull Wars, we will see how the battle over the identity of Native American remains sparked real debate on the way race, science and politics converge. The topics that will be discussed include gender, religion, and political identity to name a few.

We will also discuss the role of identity for freshmen students. Many freshmen struggle with finding someone or some group to identify with when they arrive on a college campus. For some, identities expand and are often times challenged by the intellectual smorgasbord of ideas presented to them at the university. The theme will also bring to light the multicultural make-up of our region. The Louisville and Southern Indiana region serves as a major destination for political refugees and is becoming more cosmopolitan as more people from other countries move to this area. This important theme will certainly provoke lively discussions and enhance the intellectual life of the campus, and we invite you to participate.