EXTRA CREDIT - SOCIOLOGY 170

TOPIC:  ARE YOUR INSTRUCTORS QUALIFIED?
POINTS: Up to 10
DUE:    Monday, September 20 at class time
LENGTH: About four pages (850 words)

In class, we discussed symbolic interactionism and especially
Erving Goffman's concept of Dramaturgical Analyisis. Drawing from
your notes and the text (check the index in Kendall) and take a look
at the following:

A summery of Dramaturgical concepts
and skim the first few paragraphs (or more if you're ambitious) of this
Wikipedia summary
(NOTE: We normally *DO NOT* use Wikipedia as a source, but this is a
decent summary and we'll make an exception just this once)

Then, in ESSAY FORMAT (not point-by-point short answer):

1) Look up any three of your professors on the NIU or department homepage
and look at their vita (mine is easy)

2) Then, drawing from class lecture, text, and reading, explain dramaturgical
analysis

3) Then look at how we (your profs) "present ourselves" in a vita (or what
you might call our resumes) and explain whether we're qualified to
be be professors, how we "stage manage" our "performances" to emphasize
our credibility, and whether the ways we manage it are credible
(that is, believable)

4) Conclude you paper by summarizing how useful you think dramaturgy
is for understanding how people (profs, students, whomever) maintain
status, "self-identity" or anything else you think is important.

5) Finally, in a short paragraph, select one aspect of your own life
and explain how you "stage manage" it.

Return to JT's homepage