Itsumi Nagakura - Week 6 - A04

International Scholars and International Students

The article "Opening the Box: An International Asian Woman Scholar's Fight" Akiko Takeyama explained her struggles as an international scholar in a university. Some of the struggles she had to handle were things that I could relate to being on the side of the student. 

"Due to the aggregation of Asians with Asian Americans at many universities, a significant...proportion of faculty counted as “Asian American” are in fact Asian international scholars."(Part 3, Chp 7) This one sentence, this one reality portrays the racist nature of how Asian Americans are portrayed as the perpetual foreigner. Not only that but it also portrays how Asian international scholas are mistreated. Would an international scholar from Europe be labelled as "European American" scholars? My guess is no because Europe is "white" while Asia is "yellow". But as an international student, this made me think of my dilemma of studying Asian American Studies as I am interested in the subject as well as can relate to a lot of the topics that are mentioned, but also feel out of place because I am not Asian American but simply Asian. 

Another problem I could relate to was the extra work she had to spend teaching international students who were not familiar with the American education system. I myself struggled at speaking up in class during my first quarter at Davis. I remember a friend who was also Japanese but had received an education in America before that she couldn't understand why our classmates who came with us could not speak up. I agreed with her but on the inside, I was embarrassed because it was hard for me too. It is not that international Japanese students are incapable of having an opinion or speaking, it is just that they were made be passive learners; to sit in their seats quietly during class for the past 12 years because that was how you showed respect to the teacher who was older, therefore worthy of respect.

Marouli and Duroy, 2019 

I studied at an international school in Malaysia where I received a "Western" education until I was 8 years old and at the time I always had my hand up during class. After a 9 year education in Japan, I somehow found my heart pounding, my body shivering, and my palms sweating every time I knew I had to speak in class or contemplated whether or not I should express my opinion. Even when I did, I stuttered every time. This is obviously not the case for everyone but it is the case for a lot of them. I never knew that this could be a burden to someone like Takeyama who as students we think of as a succeeded version of ourselves. 

She also explained how "women professors are oftentimes expected to be not only intellectual guides but also emotional caretakers". I understand this to be a result of patriarchic gender roles which place children having to interact more with their mothers than their fathers who are often busy at work. This allowed people to associate the idea of caretakers to women but most blame this idea on how women have maternal instincts while terrorising men from showing compassionate emotions.

Works cited 

Valverde, K.-L. C., & Dariotis, W. M. (2020). Fight the tower: Asian American women scholars resistance and renewal in the academy. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. (Kindle Version)

Marouli, C., & Duroy, Q. (2019, November 17). Reflections on the Transformative Power of Environmental Education in Contemporary Societies: Experience from Two College Courses in Greece and the USA. Retrieved from https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/22/6465/htm