Chapter 4 explores the construction and performance of poetic selfhood in Keats’s letters – and argues that it is in part through letter-writing itself that John Keats becomes a poet. It is in and through letters as much as through the writing of poems that Keats invented for himself a poetic identity (a ‘poetical Character’, as he would call it). The chapter begins by examining Keats’s construction of a poetic self in a number of letters written between April and May 1817 to two mentor-friends, Leigh Hunt and Benjamin Robert Haydon. It then moves to an examination of a cluster of formative letters to and from Keats in the late summer and autumn of 1818, culminating in the presentation of his idea of the poet as ‘camelion’ – as responding to circumstances and changing environments, and ideally as having no ‘identity’ – in a famous letter of October 1818 to Richard Woodhouse.

Chapter 3 analyzes some of the ways that stereotypes harm people’s sense of self and identity. One way is through expressive harm, which is the harm that results from the unwitting and inevitable perpetuation of stereotypes. Stereotypes have a pervasive cultural power that enables them to control people’s thoughts, feelings, behavior, and social interactions even when people actively disavow the stereotype. Other ways that stereotypes harm people’s sense of self and identity are through the internalization of oppressive social scripts, which ascribe motivations and expectations for behavior, and through stereotype threat, in which people inadvertently and paradoxically act in ways that correspond to stereotypes even as they are trying hard to avoid fitting stereotypes. When people with mental illness internalize oppressive social scripts and experience stereotype threat, they incorporate negative stereotypes into aspects of their experience and identity, which damages their identity and sense of self and also diminishes their autonomy.

The loss of community is often seen as one of the reasons for the alienating experience of modernity. Community seems to allow for a civic-minded solidarity that counteracts the legitimation crisis of democracy by returning agency to citizens. Such a demand for a communitarian correction to liberal constitutional democracy is not without dangers, even when this demand is intended to stand in the service of a more democratic life. This chapter traces the fate of this communitarian desire in a broader transatlantic field, highlighting the uncanny connections among the philosophical debate about communitarianism, the antidemocratic and authoritarian drift in American conservative political and legal thought, and central aspects of European neofascism. These connections should make us suspicious about the democratic potential often ascribed to community. The ease with which arguments for a communitarian correction of democracy can be used against democracy suggests that community lacks an intrinsically democratic and emancipatory potential.

This chapter considers different metaphors for racial encounters in American Classics departments, and how they interact globally. Beginning with the APA ‘Minority Scholarship’ in the early 2000s, the chapter traces different approaches to diversifying the demographics of traditional Classics departments in the United States, and how the field has developed in new regions. How might the proliferation of Classics programs in Southeast Asia be read as diaspora, or be distinguished from a form of neo-colonialism? How do Classics programs in Asia or the Global South interact with local histories of race and colonisation? Combining historical and contemporary case studies, this chapter reflects on different potential models of ‘diversifying’ Classics in a variety of global contexts.

Located across a large swath of land in the north of Australia, the Gulf Country has a history encompassing lives where race has featured predominantly. In the context of European colonization from around the mid nineteenth century, relations between people who have become known colloquially as Whitefellas and Blackfellas have been central to the region’s society, cultural mix, and economy. As understood in everyday language, Whitefellas are known to have no Aboriginal ancestry, while Blackfellas are descended from forebears belonging to one or more of the Indigenous language groups connected to traditional lands.

The magazine Renacimiento was one of the most important periodical publications in the evangelical world during the first decades of the twentieth century. Founded in 1921 by missionary Juan Ritchie, it became the voice of the Peruvian Evangelical Church (Iglesia Evangélica Peruana – IEP), the first national denomination in Peru. The magazine was part of initial efforts to develop Protestant journalistic work, in which other Protestant missionary agencies also participated. However, the influence of the Renacimiento was decisive in creating a Protestant consciousness and developing reactions to various social and religious topics based in a nascent evangelical identity. This chapter will focus on selections from the first years of the magazine (1921–1930), paying close attention to the political and social dimensions of faith in its articles as well as the construction of evangelical identity. Its aim is to contribute to our understanding of this crucial period of evangelical history by analyzing a forum in which the voices of missionaries and national leaders converged.

This chapter considers the English of the Southern United States with a focus on the ways in which past and present settlement histories, social structures and economic realities are reflected in the language and language variation of the region.  Despite persisting ideas of geographic and social insularity, the American South is a large region that has and has always contained great diversity. This chapter begins with identifying where is the American South, what are its subregions and what role regionality plays in variation. Further, we outline what are some of the traditional linguistic features that are associated with the South. A discussion of research into variation and how different social factors and groups follows. We conclude by looking forward to needed research.

African American English (AAE) is arguably the most studied variety of English in sociolinguistics, and much of the formative work on the variety took place in cities, setting the stage for the direction of sociolinguistics in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. This chapter provides an overview of the important early work on AAE in urban environments. Alongside a discussion of what we learned about the variety from early studies, the chapter will also explore how methods of study and the variables themselves have evolved. The chapter includes a discussion of differences within AAE that are conditioned not only by region, but also by finer-grained aspects of community and individual identity. The recent focus on a wider scope of variables, as well as speakers who were previously overlooked, has allowed for more detailed discussion of AAE as a flexible, evolving toolkit that speakers may use to construct and perform complex identities.

This chapter explores the scientific connection between sex and sport. It begins by examining the meaning of sex and the criteria used to assign individuals to the male or female category. It ends by exploring the link between sex and sport and identifying the sex-related traits that have the greatest impact on athletic performance.

This chapter highlights the relationship between celebrity, sexual identity, and a star’s “authenticity” in gay celebrity autobiography. Authenticity is achieved in celebrity autobiographies when the reader perceives they are receiving personal information about a star or, ideally, that the star is participating in this revelation of private details. For gay celebrities, this personal information includes a recounting of the star’s coming out as gay. Coming out is performative and personal; it establishes intimacy with the reader and adheres to expectations for a celebrity’s media-mediated “revelation.” The coming-out story establishes the gay celebrity as vulnerable and relatable to gay readers and allows heterosexual readers to connect to gay subject matter through the revelatory nature of confession. The autobiographical form gives the celebrity control over the coming-out story as he “outs” himself, earmarking the “revelation” as the star “being himself” for his readers, giving them an exclusive that exists outside of the hollow construct of fame. Gay celebrity autobiography represents an inclusive visibility for both the writer and the reader even as the confessional space of the autobiography itself may also be an illusion in which truth and authenticity are queered through the form of the autobiography itself.

This chapter focuses on two major axes of social identity in India: caste and tribe. It provides an overview of the two categories, in particular focusing on how the categories are identified and measured in national-level macro data. It summarizes key features of contemporary economic disparities along these two dimensions. The chapter discusses the overlap between caste/tribal status and religion and provides a summary overview of the racial theory of caste. Tribe as a category has specific dimensions that are distinct from the caste system. The chapter reviews these and moves on to a discussion of the intersection of caste/tribe category with sex. The evidence in the chapter suggests that caste and tribe continue to define socio-economic status in contemporary India. India’s affirmative-action policies addressing caste, tribe and gender disparities are necessary, but not sufficient, to lower the influence of the lottery of birth on individual outcomes.

The autobiographical act of coming out was one of the central gestures of US gay liberation. In the late 1960s and 1970s coming out was part of a new defiant way of living homosexuality and promised to transform the social world by showing how gay people were everywhere. Yet, in the period since this time, coming out has tended to be viewed much more suspiciously. For queer theory, coming out is associated with a naïve belief in subjective coherence, stable identity, and liberal personhood, all constructed or produced on the basis of suppressing both social and psychic difference. This chapter challenges this established perspective by foregrounding the wide variety of autobiographical writings in which gay men came out in this period. Far from a step into straightforward coherence, finding identity in these texts is often a fractured and fraught undertaking. The chapter covers a wide range of material, from single-author autobiographies published by mainstream presses to numerous anthologies published by grassroots initiatives. The sheer variety of texts addressed further challenges the singular narrative about coming out that has become established within queer scholarship.