In studying these activities as ways of constituting social worlds, students are learning to examine

Participant and Institutional Identity: Self-representation Across Multiple Genres at a Catholic College Katrina M. Powell Department of English Louisiana State University Baton Rouge, Louisiana 70803 kmpowell@lsu.edu http://www.artsci.lsu.edu/wgs/faculty/Powell.html Abstract This qualitative research project, informed by ethnographic and feminist research methodologies, focuses on how students negotiate various genres with which they come in contact. Through the close analysis of a small, religious-affiliated, liberal arts college, this study examines how students' constructs of "self" are reflected in school genres and how their backgrounds, specific academic disciplines, and institutional goals affect those constructs. In order to conduct this analysis, activity theory is used to examine possible competing goals within the activity system (the college itself) and, in turn, how those goals can affect student writing. Since participant identity is an issue of activity systems, I examine identity through self-representation, as it has been theorized in autobiography studies. Combining activity theory and theories of self-representation and performance, I create a framework to explore how genres can simultaneously liberate and constrain and how students negotiate the various tensions they may encounter within an activity system. I identified myself completely with [my professor]…. I readily imitated his writing, took up in succession his pet ...