What Black Studies courses have you taken and how has your perspective evolved until now?

The first Black Studies class I took was during the Fall of my freshman year. My Orientation Staff member suggested taking George Lipsitz's BL ST 1 because it covered a handful of GE's and because she admired him a great deal. To my surprise, she was right. He was an amazing professor, and I enjoyed the class more so than any other I was taking at the time. By the end of the quarter, I found myself actually keeping up with the reading and visiting Professor Lipsitz's office hours. I crashed his BL ST 6 course the next quarter, and took it with two friends from the dorms. My friends mostly joked about the catch phrases he used throughout the class, like the "long fetch of history" and "crossroads of epistemology," while I ate up every word he said. I wanted to keep taking Black Studies courses, so for Spring I took BL ST 45 with Professor Stewart. The class covered a broad reach of Black cultural expression through music, art, and dance, but similar to Professor Lipsitz's course, it created a bridge between culture and history.

My sophomore year I took BL ST 38B to cover my Literature GE and BL ST 153, because I heard rave reviews on the course. I still wasn't sure if I wanted to commit to being a double major, because at the time I was about halfway completed with my Art History major, yet I realized I was racking up BL ST courses, so it only made sense to declare. The fall quarter of my junior year, I took BL ST 169CR with Professor Gaye Johnson. At first, I was apprehensive about the course because the title alone described the class as primarily history. Professor Johnson exceeded my expectations by including "Beloved" by Toni Morrison, and making the first paper assignment to connect historical accounts to Jacob Lawrence paintings.

The following quarter I took three BL ST courses, BL ST 4, 106 and 193GG. I worried that I wouldn't be able to keep up with all of the reading, because as we all know, the average BL ST course has at least 5 books to complete. The fear of Professor Banks calling me out in class for not reading kept my nose in all of the BL ST 106 books, and the academic study of race and the systemic presence of racism fascinated me. Professor Banks is responsible for how I found my voice in college courses. Before her class, I hardly ever spoke up in class, but because she required it, I made a huge effort in putting myself out there during class. BL ST 193GG served as my culture fix, where I learned about musical compositions by black people. Spring quarter, I took the Sociology of the Black Experience with Professor McAuley, which was great because I felt like I was learning about black people's lives on a more personal level. Much of what we talked about was the content that can't be found in textbooks, rather the differences within the black community concerning class levels.

So far during my senior year, I've taken BL ST 118, 124, and 7. All of which were very different. BL ST 118 with Professor Johnson contextualized the black experience with the brown experience. Professor Lipsitz's BL ST 124 really pulled at my heart strings, through its content about housing, inheritance and wealth, and the huge discrepancies in the housing market in the US. BL ST 7 with Professor McAuley gave me a global, diasporic view of the black experience. Taking a lower division course as a senior made me appreciate the dialogue of my underclassmen peers and the passion that graduate student TA's have for the course.

Black Studies courses have made me much more sensitive to issues concerning race. I've learned about how closely different races overlap in sentiments and treatment in the US. Prior to taking Black Studies courses, I hated taking history classes where I had to memorize dates and wars. Black Studies appealed so much to me because it fused together the moments in history with the creative expressions of the people who were experiencing great changes. Coming from an Art History background, it's obvious that I prefer to learn about culture through the visual, but Black Studies offered literature and music as well. The aesthetics of a period were conveyed through the songs, poems, and paintings produced.

Overall, I've taken a wide variety of courses in the Black Studies Department. Through completing the major, I've been peppered with questions as to why I chose this major, because to be frank, it's pretty surprising to see a Japanese American Black Studies major. The first time someone asked, I really couldn't think of an answer beyond the fact that I like the professors and courses more so than any others I've taken. As I reflected more deeply, I realized that the Black Studies department offers a very contemporary survey of American history. In almost every course, I've learned about events in the 20th century, which cannot be said in every English course or Art History course. Beyond the history, I learned about the culture of people, and their take on the events around them.