I took Global Health Culture during the Summer of 2021. To me, understanding the implications of the global north on developing nations and their healthcare systems was a necessity to continue expanding my global citizenship. This class was imperative to my education during my time at UF due to the exposure it gave me to new topics. From this class, I was able to learn how global health policies and practices have largely ignored the problem of pain and palliation in the global south as it has been long-established. In this case, pain relief is not a priority but rather a luxury in the global south. As a consequence, we come across the invisibility of pain that arises from the intricate history of political, economic, and cultural forces. Moreover, I grappled with topics that discussed how culture can get interchanged with structural violence. In addition, paying close attention to history, and the archeological construction of global health knowledge through the workings of different artifacts led me to think more critically which was highly useful in my study abroad. This class led me to use the critical historical lens, and deeply refine my analysis of people, programmatic interventions, policies, conferences, and philosophies. I am confident that what I learned in this class will follow me into law school and my professional career. 

I took Violence Against Women in the Spring of 2022 as the class name sparked my interest. As a Women's Studies major, I found that this class not only served me academically but also personally. As a Black Latina woman, domestic violence and the maltreatment of women have always been present in my community, nevertheless, I never thought to examine its profundity. Because of this class, I got to engage with a theoretical framework for understanding violence against women as well as incorporate international and transnational perspectives into analyses and discussions. In addition, I was led to examine how women subject to abuse could label their experiences using a Power and Control Wheel. It is without a doubt that the material covered in this class transformed my views on the types of violence against women. Terms such as rape, sexual harassment, abuse, and the plethora of other experiences women are subject to were familiar to me, but I always viewed them as incorrigible which was changed after taking this class. Therefore, the lessons and information I took from this course were edifying to my sense of self as it equipped me to speak on topics that are so mainstream in our present world. 

I took Transnational Feminism in the Fall of 2021. As I reflect on the different courses I have taken at UF, I can confidently attest this is one of the most challenging ones I ever took. This class tied the gap between other Women's Studies courses and an international perspective. One of the most challenging yet rewarding things about this class was reading works by scholars like Said and Anderson. The level of maturity found within their writing juxtaposed with the fast-paced nature of the class led me to be an analytic reader. This class was also challenging as it sought to establish a historical context right from the start which made its overall objective harder to grasp. As I made my way through Said and Anderson's work on nationalism as a universal spur to imperialism, it was hard to find how exactly this tied into feminism. Nevertheless, these works set the foundation to later understand societal issues that still exist today as they focused on historical debates about intersectional inequalities. Once the course concluded, I could see how exploring historical and contemporary systems of privilege and oppression was deeply interwoven and necessary to discuss feminism. In the end, as challenging as this course was, my ability to persevere through it paved the way for the rest of the classes I took while at UF. 

Taken Spring 2021.

Taken Fall 2021.

Taken Spring 2021.