Zemach-Bernsin Reflection
It was interesting how the article framed the notion of study abroad as we know it in contemporary higher educational context, through a critical anti-capitalist framework. As a future study abroad student, this was helpful in making me think in more detail about how I want to engage with study abroad, another country and its people, culture, and language. As the article points out, we as American students represent so much of the economic, political, and moral catastrophe that inflicts the lives of people across the world, and in traveling to places where this reputation looms large, it is important to find ways to connect and be mindful of this dilemma. In line with this train of though, it is important not to view study abroad as another purchasable commodity, that yields “cross-cultural understanding, global citizenship, personal advancement, and adventure,” but understand it as a privilege that only will give us as much as we dedicate to it. In addition to this, the article also points out that with this element of commodification, American bodies are prioritized (as they are paying) while the people of the places students visit often become part of the backdrop, a component of the service of study abroad which we purchase. Zemach-Bernsin also articulates the way in which problematic advertising for study abroad, just as it does for all other forms of commodity in our greater capitalist environment, plays a big part in our understanding of the product and strips away the unique culture significance of each destination through generalizations and claims intended to entice an American “buyer” or student. I find that the nature of Zemach-Bernsin’s astute perspective of cultural, global, class, and racial conscious, transcends just study aborad, and is in fact crucial in understanding all facets of the overlapping relationship between institutions we attend and their attempt to teach or engage with culture from an ethnocentric perspective. Its important to remember that like study abroad, these notions of culture embedded into the curriculums and education institutions at a large, are inherently commodified as a profit yielding element of the university. Whether they present as language study, ethnic studies, affinity spaces, or in Zemach-Bersin’s case, study abroad, it is important to apply her critical perspective on these infusions of culture that do not belong to the history fabric of American high educational tradition.
