By Mona Sun ’23
“Nobody’s free until everybody’s free.” After taking one of the sociology classes – SOAN 233, I changed my phone wallpaper to these thought-provoking words. Exploring the sociology world and trying to understand colonialism and post-colonialism with Professor Ibtesam is truly an eye-opening and life-changing experience.
I learned the terms “colonialism” and “post-colonialism” from my previous high school history class, but we never really talked about the meaning behind it and how this part of history has impacted people until now. This class walked me through different classical texts and sociology ideas, such as “imperialism”, “orientalism”, “Commodity fetishism”, etc. This course kept challenging my view of today’s world. Reading a small place by Kincaide, I learned the ugliness of tourism. Reading Can Subaltern Speak by Spivak, I realized the predicament of oppressed people who are silenced. Reading orientalism addressed by Said, I found that our image was constructed and defined by west scholars, which is not our true image. There are many more moments like these, which encouraged me to look at the world from a completely different perspective.
This is the most difficult class and also the best class that I’ve ever had. Everything is new and fascinating to me. We don’t have too much reading in regards to length but the readings are so sophisticated and really hard to understand. I was pretty stressed at the beginning because I think my English is not good enough for this class. Sometimes I just read the assigned reading over and over but still couldn’t understand anything. However, the class lecture and discussion helped me understand most of them. My professors and classmates had many great ideas and thoughtful understanding. What happened during class always inspired me to try harder and keep going with this class’s material. I couldn’t understand everything we talked about during the class but those takeaways brought me to another level of understanding of the world. I was introduced to many new ideas and sociology concepts that describe what has been happening in the world. It’s so fascinating to realize that no knowledge is produced to seek knowledge but to serve a certain purpose. All the things that we are able to see today are processed and packaged for a certain purpose, such as the interests of the bourgeoisie. I realized that I shouldn’t fully accept what I see over different platforms, but look at it critically.
Colonialism is not a simple concept to describe. One country takes over another country, but the whole systemic domination of one group over another group continues to affect every individual in today’s world no matter where you are from.
During the class, everyone is so enthusiastic about the topic and there’s a general frustration going on throughout the course: What we can do in today’s world when we were impacted by the heritage of colonialism and postcolonialism at every moment? I think professor Ibtesam gave us a good answer, at least enough for me. We are not able to solve the systemic problem of today’s world structure and maybe not in the near future. However, we are here to recognize those issues, educate ourselves, critically examine our world, and think about the possible reaction together. We are not talking about where we should end but where we should start and how we go with all the information and knowledge we learned from this class.
This class inspired me to have many great conversations with my peers, professors, and parents about today’s world and how we can make a change. The impact is not a one-time thing but an ongoing process. Currently, I’m reading the “Pedagogy of the Oppressed” with my family members. This class grounded me well to understand other important texts and continue powerful conversations with others.
There’s much more to talk about this great class. I’m truly grateful for having this class and looking forward to taking more sociology classes.
soanstolaf 
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