FURSCA - 1st entry

Molo! or Molweni! (depending on how many people are reading this right now)/[, or I suppose] Hallo! depending on who's reading this right now...

This is my first entry for my FURSCA summer, and I didn't quite realise how exciting and overwhelming everything is until this very moment. As I'm typing this intro, my mind is trying to recall everything I've done in the past few days.

Well, I arrived here this past Friday, so I suppose I'm still adjusting to the FURSCA lifestyle while everyone is assumably getting into the groove of things. In retrospect, I find it funny how I was greeted to Albion by a weekend full of storms and even a day without power. In any case, the weekend transition was great; it was really nice to see friends and colleagues from the past two years, and equally as nice to be meeting many more professors that I otherwise would never have the chance to meet. My host family's really great, and I'm excited to be back in Albion. (I'm also very happy that Rafa won his fourth straight Roland Garros. How I wish I was on the crushed brick of Paris right now.... Oh well, the Albion courts are great, too.)

After my orientation meeting with my advisor on Friday, I felt like I knew what I was doing. However, when he, another student and I came back from our first research trip to Michigan State University, I felt a bit overwhelmed. Anyone who's familiar with my research will know that most of my research interests these past couple of years has focused on the Philippines, France, and/or Catholicism. This time around, I'd say my focus is somewhat new-- and a great challenge.

In the fall, I'll be going to South Africa. From what I can tell, I'll be taking a month of classes in Cape Town, and then do a two month independent study project, potentially outside of Cape Town. I've already submitted a plan as to what I want to do my ISP on to the programme supervisors. Essentially, I'll be continuing my FURSCA work. With that said, I feel like I can explain my FURSCA project a bit.

The title of the project itself is "Linguistic Apartheid: South African Lingual Identity". I'm looking at pre-, during- and post-apartheid South African linguistic identity. As this is definitely covering a lot of territory, I'm in a constant state of trying to key in on a few topics, though I think that'll come as I near the completion of my research before writing my thesis. Since most of my research so far has centred around the Philippines, France, and/or Catholicism, I'm currently in the stage of bringing myself to that level in terms of my knowledge about South Africa. As I'm doing this, I'm trying to figure out what I really want to study. At this point, I'm thinking more of the "why" as opposed to the "what," truly making this an IS/Ethnic Studies kind of thing rather than a lot of history. Also, I'm thinking of spending a majority of my summer analysing past interviews and getting a grasp of the Soweto uprisings in 1976. The general thought coming into my project was that if Spanish reached the same level as Afrikaans and was mandated by the government to be an educating language alongside English, would American students uprise just as Soweto student rose against their government when it was declared that Afrikaans (the language seen as closely tied to apartheid) would be an educating alongside English? My answer would be no. Thinking into the future, my big question for my theisis is how post-colonial Africa views language and how it affects their identity. It means something to me to know French, understand Tagalog, know bits and pieces of German, Italian and Spanish, recently interested in Japanese, and will know Xhosa...so what does it mean for South Africans, Cameroon, Burundi, etc?

So, in summary, that's that, I suppose. I've just finished working with a single chapter in an in-depth sort of mode. The process is kind of complicated so it's taking me a while to get used to it (since I kind of just made it up a few days ago) and which would explain why it's taken me maybe about 5-6 hours just to read about 30 or so pages. After working on this project for essentially two years, I surely hope that this will work and benefit me in the end.

Before I close and begin the next chapter of my reading, I just wanted to mention (for my memory's sake, at least) that I'm both excited and surprised with the number of people who just seem to come out of nowhere and can provide tons of help with my project. It's simply amazing to be working with the connections that Albion and so many others have to offer.

Sala kahle!/Tosiens!

ps/ For the record, I'm learning Xhosa, not Afrikaans. :) If I do include Afrikaans in my entries, it'll be separated from Xhosa with a "/", as I have done here.