Emi Kawamura ’27 Earns Critical Language Scholarship

A psychology major with minors in East Asian Studies and dance and a concentration in education, Emi has been a teaching assistant for multiple classes, including Introduction to Psychology, taught by Assistant Professor of Psychology Rebecca Totton, and Contemporary Dance I, taught by Assistant Professor of Dance Holly Handman-Lopez. Emi, a Findlay, Ohio, native, is also part of the Vibe Dance Company and will be a director this upcoming year, building on her involvement in six previous departmental shows.

This summer, Emi will study Swahili in Arusha, Tanzania, thanks to the Critical Language Scholarship—a big step toward her post-graduation goals of serving in the Peace Corps in a Swahili-speaking country. 

“As a psychology major, I am strongly interested in how culture influences psychology, specifically in conceptualizing mental health,” Emi says. “With a future aspiration in cross-cultural counseling, I applied for the Critical Language Scholarship to build a strong foundation in Swahili to learn how cultural practices like dance shape emotional well-being in Tanzanian culture first-hand.”

Emi became interested in Tanzania after being introduced to African folkloric dance and language by former Visiting Assistant Professor of Africana Studies and Dance Talise Campbell. She soon began researching other African folkloric dance forms and discovered ngoma, a traditional dance form performed in Tanzania. 

“I became amazed by how the drums and singing seemed to unite the community and how each dancer vividly communicated their emotions in a beautifully raw way,” she says. “My interest in studying Swahili began when I realized I could not understand the dance form and the represented cultural values until I understood the language.

“Because language is a crucial tool in emotional expression, understanding behavior, and identity in psychology, developing a strong language foundation will provide me with the crucial first step towards my journey.”

Describe what you will be doing next year as a Critical Language Scholarship winner. What made you want to apply for this scholarship?

Swahili is Africa's most widely used language and serves as a lingua franca. I am excited to study Swahili to understand the stories, traditions, and customs that shape ngoma and the culture. By being able to study in Tanzania, I aspire to connect with the people in my host community to learn more about ngoma from those who participate in the art. I also want to explore how dance can be a healing form of emotional expression.

How does this scholarship align with your career goals?

Growing up with parents who do not speak English as their first language, I grew up seeing barriers that exist in health care due to language, especially in terms of mental health. Emotions and mental health struggles require more than a conversational level of communication to express them fully.  

Furthermore, mental health is conceptualized differently across cultures—emotions and experiences of mental health cannot be fully communicated through translation. Noticing this barrier, I want to expand my understanding of mental health from the perspectives of different cultures and widen my knowledge of psychology beyond the white and American-dominated narrative. 

Even though I cannot become a fluent speaker this summer, I am committed to learning Swahili to conceptualize how Tanzanian culture views, describes, and experiences emotions to widen my understanding of mental health beyond the American perspective. In the future, this experience will allow me to practice culturally mindful counseling that is decentered from Western ideologies and narratives that structure modern psychology today. 

How does this scholarship build on your previous studies and activities at Oberlin?

My psychology classes at Oberlin helped me develop a unique and multi-faceted lens of psychology built upon diverse perspectives, shaping me into a critical learner. Realizing and learning that current understandings of psychology are based upon a foundation of white-dominated and Western-centric research, I became interested in learning more about cross-cultural understandings of mental health. Aspiring to be a counselor who serves people across cultural boundaries, I am committed to using my personal experiences to understand how mental health is conceptualized in non-Western cultures.

My interest deepened when I took West African Dance my first year at Oberlin, which enriched my idea of dance as a medium of emotional expression. I began to see that dance is a “language” of culture and a crucial community-building tool. This class also made me curious about how the characteristics of dance could represent cultural values and how emotions are conceptualized and expressed. 

In pursuing my interest in exploring cross-cultural conceptualizations of mental health in Tanzania, I realized the importance of language in this process. As a fluent Japanese speaker, I have been a Japanese language tutor. In helping students learn to communicate together, I learned the special connection in sharing a language that cannot be recreated through translation. I also realized how much nuance of expression gets lost in the translation across languages. 

How did Oberlin shape or influence you as an academic, thinker, and person?

Oberlin has reshaped my view of academia as something not only centered around classrooms, but also through interpersonal connections outside of academic spaces. (Even over a casual lunch in a dining hall!) My knowledge has not only been shaped by faculty, but also by my classmates, dorm mates, and dance classmates. The diverse perspectives of Oberlin students have led to countless enriching conversations that have challenged my knowledge in numerous ways, empowering me to become the exploratory and critical thinker I am today. I believe that Oberlin students have the capability to initiate powerful change, and this energy continuously empowers me.

Because of Oberlin’s liberal arts curriculum, I have explored different avenues of thought across many disciplines without being tied to my psychology major. This has taught me to approach ideas from multidisciplinary perspectives, seeing the connection between seemingly unrelated fields such as peace and conflict studies, sociology, dance, and psychology. My studies in these seemingly unrelated fields have expanded and enriched my understanding of psychology in a unique way and question the status quo in the field.

What’s the best advice you’ve received while at Oberlin?

The best pieces of advice have come from two special connections I've made during my time at Oberlin. 

“Change every ‘I have to’ to ‘I get to.’”

These first words are from an AVI worker I connected with in my first year of college. Every time I walked into Decafe, he would greet me with a smile and warm welcome, leaving me feeling happier than I was when I walked in. In a particularly difficult period, he gave me these words of advice that I have truly taken to heart every day since. 

No matter how stressed I am in academics or my personal life, I am constantly reminded of how grateful I am to be at Oberlin and to have the opportunity to live and grow with such unique individuals, who I have been greatly inspired by.

“Don’t let other people being cold make you a cold person too. Choose to be a kind person within this cold world.”

This second piece of advice was given to me by a classmate (and role model) from my West African dance class. She was a grade above me, a gorgeous dancer, and a wise and powerful woman. Struggling to find spaces I felt a sense of belonging in and people I connected with during my first semester of college, she gave me these words of advice. 

These words have built the intention of how I show up in each space even today. Especially applicable in the frightening state of our nation now, these words have shaped who I am today and who I aim to be during my time at Oberlin and beyond. 

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