IA Scholars Kerstin, Natalie, Kaleb, Mera, and Matt shared their experiences studying critical languages such as Russian, Korean, Chinese, and Arabic at Ohio State. I am minoring in Russian, so it was very interesting for me to hear the experiences of Mera and Matt, who both have studied Russian in different contexts. Mera initially learned Russian while living in Russia and Matt similarly learned Russian through meeting Russian people, while in China, because he is also learning Chinese. I learned about extra resources in Columbus and Ohio State that I could utilize to better my Russian language skills, such as participating in the Russian language tables, volunteering to speak with Russian seniors in Columbus, and obviously studying abroad, with scholarships such as the Fulbright, CLS or Gilman Scholarships that can entirely fund my trip.

I am minoring in Russian, which I have taken for 2 semesters now and through this event, I learned a lot about how to successfully study a critical language and how to best become immersed in speaking and studying the language. I am not entirely sure how my future career goals might incorporate Russian, because I initially just wanted to minor in Russian because I had space in my schedule and I took a Russian literature course during my first semester at OSU that piqued my interest in learning the language as well. However, after learning about the Russian language resources that can better my speaking skills, I am certain I will gain more academic success in my Russian language courses which are bound to get harder as I progress to higher levels, so enhancing my speaking and understanding of Russian outside the classroom will better my grades in higher-level courses.

This IA Community Meeting was a faculty spotlight where Dr. Ines Valde, an Associate Professor of the Political Science Department shared her research and the courses she is involved in teaching at Ohio State. As she described in her presentation, her research primarily focuses around the Politics of Immigration, Transnationalism and Cosmopolitanism, and the Imperial Origins of Western Democracies. What all of this has in common is the importance of race and the social construct of race in shaping our society today. Dr. Valdez started off her presentation by discussing a quote from WEB DuBois, who pointed out that  “territorial political and economic expansion of the West had made the contact and coexistence between Europeans and brown and black peoples inevitable.” Therefore, colonization became a large basis of the intermingling of different groups of people, who were then categorized into a hierarchy by their white colonizers on the basis of their skin.

The role of race in our society has become increasingly important to consider in our society today with the prominence Black Lives Matter movement and the development of the construct of race has irreversibly divided communities of color in America and around the world. People of color are discriminated against in nearly all aspects of society whether it is wealth, safety, or education and this is all a part of the legacy of colonization that thrived off of the exploitation of Black and Brown people in the Americas, Asia, and Africa to make white Europeans wealthy. It is certainly important to look at the issues of our society today and analyze the systemic institutions that have allowed these practices to come into place as we look to seek equality and empowerment for marginalized communities of color in the United States and around the world.

Dr. Valdez’s research seemed incredibly fascinating to me and I would certainly love to take one of her courses in the future if I have room in my schedule. Dr. Valdez’s teaches Introduction to Human Rights(IS 3450) and Racial Capitalism(PS 7410), which she discussed in her presentation. As an Economics major interested in studying socioeconomic disparities between different communities and ethnicities, the Racial Capitalism course seemed very interesting to me, but it is a graduate course, so I’ll hopefully be able to take similar courses for undergraduates in the future!

I was on the student planning committee for an international conference on Conflict Resolution Education. This conference was a two-week event that focused on youth engagement in conflict resolution for the first-weekend and then focused on both current professionals involved in diplomacy and peacebuilding along with students during the second week. As a member of the planning committee, I spent all summer working with students from different universities across Ohio and the United States to plan this online conference that people would be attending from around the world. Our planning included deciding on speakers who would present at the conference, deciding which type of events we would like to organize, and working on advertising the conference. As the Professional Development Chair in IA, I decided to also suggest including professional development events during the first weekend of the conference and we ended up including a resume workshop event during the first weekend!

One of the presentations for this conference that I attended and was a moderator for was called “Justice in Images: From the Amazon Rainforest to the United States of America.” The panelists for this event were Tyrone Turner, who is a photographer working for National Geographic and the Washington DC NPR Station along with Gabriele Sciortino, and Debora Komukai, who have both also worked with Tyrone and photographed people and events around the world. Tyrone shared his photography from New Orleans, LA where he got to capture the stories of Black communities in New Orleans through photojournalism. Gabriele is from Brazil and his photojournalism experience was centered around photography of the Brazilian rainforest and the indigenous communities there. Debora is also from Brazil and her photojournalism was focused on urban communities, particularly the lower-income marginalized communities, in the cities of Brazil. Through their photojournalism, I got to learn more about how photographers document the stories of various communities and how they aim to learn their stories without serving as a distraction. I thought it was fascinating to learn about the job and responsibilities of a photographer as an individual with the power to share stories from around the world and inspire peace and inclusivity, which is not something you always realize when you are quickly scrolling through the content of photographers on social media.