Identity and Difference
MIT OpenCourseWare offers the full materials for this undergraduate seminar on how individual and group identities form, persist, and change. The syllabus works through competing theoretical frameworks for identity formation, including how societies construct notions of "the normal," then applies them to concrete categories: gender, sexual orientation, race, ethnicity, religion, language, social class, and bodily difference. Readings and discussion questions ask students to weigh these frameworks against each other rather than adopt a single lens, building toward a central argument of the course, that a person is simultaneously a product of social forces and an agent capable of acting on them. The course page includes the syllabus, reading list, and assignment prompts as published by MIT, free to access under a Creative Commons license, with no certificate offered. It suits students in anthropology, sociology, or gender studies looking for a structured introduction to identity theory rather than a single topic deep dive.