"I became much more aware of the differences between my experience as a Black American in Paris and the experiences of Black French people and Black immigrants from Africa and elsewhere."
I had dreamed of spending time in France since I was a child, but as a nontraditional student with obligations, spending a summer abroad was not something I thought was possible.The Global Learning Scholarship helped make it financially possible for me to spend two months in Paris studying French and also independently do research of my own.
I am an African American Studies major, and much of my work focuses on Black history, culture, identity, and the ways Black people create community and belonging. I went to Paris already interested in the long history of Black American artists and writers who lived and worked there, but living in Paris gave me a different way of thinking about the borders, literal and figurative, of Blackness.
My intensive course was about the language, but we also studied French culture, history, politics, and contemporary life and had rich discussions in class about French society. We got to experience many of those subjects in real time outside the classroom as we observed and walked through Paris. The pace of the class was extremely challenging and there were times when I struggled, but my professor and classmates were supportive and we all became a close group over the summer.
Outside of class, I visited places connected to people I have studied for years, like James Baldwin, Josephine Baker, and Richard Wright. I took a Black history tour of Paris and a Black queer Paris tour and spent time talking with Black people from different parts of the Black diaspora about their experiences in France. I became close friends with people who shared their own experiences and struggles around race, identity, and belonging. I became much more aware of the differences between my experience as a Black American in Paris and the experiences of Black French people and Black immigrants from Africa and elsewhere.
All of this changed the scope and direction of my academic work. I am much more interested in what happens to Black identity and experience as people move between countries, cultures, and languages, and the different meanings Blackness can take on depending on where you are. All of this connects to my current research on Black queer life and intimacy, beginning with Harlem Renaissance writer Richard Bruce Nugent and sculptor Richmond Barthé.
A lot of what I loved about my summer had nothing to do with a specific assignment or academic goal. I made deep friendships in Paris. I developed routines, had favorite places, struggled with the language, got lost, learned how to navigate the city, and experienced what it was like to be a part of a place instead of only being the observer.
I now have a different sense of myself and of the world outside the United States. So many have commented on the change in me since I returned, and I agree that I have been profoundly changed by the experience.
