Winter development reflection 2

A couple of weeks ago I went to a lecture by visiting professor Eiichiro Azuma. He had a host of interesting things to say about the way that the Japanese saw a group of American soldiers of Japanese descent as a model for the rebuilding of their own countries military. More interesting from a mentor perspective was the way he talked about the divisions within the history field. Similar to the way that the humanities itself is subdivided, the history field has split itself up along geographic lines. That is problematic for him because he studies both Japan and the United States by focusing on the experience of all people of Japanese descent. These divisions also change as you go overseas. These distinctions often mean that historians focus on only parts of his work and miss the bigger picture that history can offer. Azuma's experience is similar to the problems that often face UNST faculty in the attempt to put together a cross-disciplinary course. Some professors are willing to ignore the fences between different fields of scholarship, while others are afraid to get out of their comfort zone. Like Professor Azuma, I do not want to be restricted by the arbitrary loyalty to an idea of what history should look like. When approaching material, the only restrictions should only come from the subject itself.