“Call Me By My Name”
Degree Project
zines, website,
printed posters
Degree Project
zines, website,
printed posters
As Chinese students studying and living in an English-speaking environment, many of us have an English name to be identifiable. But which name represents our true identity? This project “CALL ME BY MY NAME” aims to explore Chinese international students’ complex feelings about their anglicized names & identity as well as present them to the English speaking audiences.
2022
Inspirations &
Stories Collection
Stories Collection
Last year, I found a video called “I Decided Not To Learn English Anymore” on Chinese social media. In which a Chinese Harvard student shared her language-learning journey and her struggles trying to blend into American society.
In this video, she talked about how her primary school teacher just randomly assigned an English name to students. Surprisingly, I had the exact same experience as her, my English name was randomly assigned by my English teacher as well, she got “Wency”, and I got “Sally”.
I stop using Sally in the first year of college, It was sort of strange because I was finally in an English-speaking environment and I abandoned my English name.
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In this video, she talked about how her primary school teacher just randomly assigned an English name to students. Surprisingly, I had the exact same experience as her, my English name was randomly assigned by my English teacher as well, she got “Wency”, and I got “Sally”.
I stop using Sally in the first year of college, It was sort of strange because I was finally in an English-speaking environment and I abandoned my English name.
Before, I never had problems with Sally since I feel like it is just a code name that I only use occasionally. But in college, Sally became my “primary name”, and all of a sudden I realized that I am not Sally and probably never should be. Think bak now, why do we need an English name to be able to start leaning English anyway?
Inspired by this video, I start to think about the relationship between our Chinese name and English name. As international students, we all have or had multiple names in different language environments. How do people feel about their names? Which name do they identify with? Who gave their English names? I came up with a questionnaire and start collecting stories from Chinese interntional students studying in the USA.
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Inspired by this video, I start to think about the relationship between our Chinese name and English name. As international students, we all have or had multiple names in different language environments. How do people feel about their names? Which name do they identify with? Who gave their English names? I came up with a questionnaire and start collecting stories from Chinese interntional students studying in the USA.
Fake I-20 forms
The I-20 Form I made
The official I-20 Form
An I-20 form is the official government document which certifies that a person is eligible to apply for an F-1 student visa. As international student, this form as important as our passports. I took the form of the original document and replace the content with people’s name stories.
Love & Not Love Zines
Shell Book #1
Shell Book #2
Documentations
