Blending Lifewriting and Technology to Teach Language, Culture & Identity in the ESL Classroom

Abstract

By blending lifewriting e.g. diaries/journals, creative non-fiction, poetry, and autoethnography and technology e.g. social networking, such as YouTube, I study my own life, and advocate for a method, theory, and approach to teaching language, culture, and identity in the ESL classroom that also uses both. I call this Transautomedia. I combine analysis (theory), application (original research projects), and activism (vigorous action in support of my cause). This is written (semi) linearly, but is also an art installation in the form of a website called The Human Archive Project (THAP), a Trans-Space, not bound by language, genre, discipline, or identity. On THAP I research my hybrid identity and ask: In what ways did being brought up simultaneously Jewish and Muslim help shape my hybrid identities? How do language, religion, culture, community, power, class, and gender contribute to my complicated and changing identities? I also write about myself since I am discussing writing about the self and since my own struggles with my hybrid identity can serve as an example of the kinds of issues that ESL (and all L2) learners face as they attempt to build their new identity in another language, another culture. Additionally, my dissertation includes two projects: Reclaiming Lithuania, a Vlog series about my Lithuanian Jewish identity, and Baubie, a memoir about the death of my Holocaust survivor grandmother. Finally, this dissertation also includes a pedagogical aspect. I create a syllabus with activities for The ESL classroom using lifewriting and technology, and how-to's on such things as website design.