“Sociology is great at both shattering blissfully ignorant impressions (which can be a buzzkill), and deepening your appreciation for a culture in its entirety." /web/aca_socialsciences_general/CT_November18_YugiroAsano_94x84.jpg

Our Alumni: Francesco Yugiro Asano

You might think that a student looking to spend a gap year in between college and graduate school would go off on an adventure to a distant land and use the time to clear his head of thoughts of school. But that has hardly been the case for recent alumnus Francesco Yugiro Asano. Asano has managed to maintain a strong tie to Brooklyn College even as he explores other interests and hobbies half a year out college. He continues to take the long trip he took from Long Island beginning his junior year at the college to remain an active voice on the Steering Committee for Asian American Studies. Asano took several courses with sociology Assistant Professor Yung-Yi Diana Pan, who organized the committee. Pan thought Francesco would be "a good addition to the Asian American Studies Steering Committee to not only offer a student's perspective, but also add the reflections of a thoughtful activist and budding scholar." Currently, Asano is working with another student "to come up with creative ways to invigorate resources for Asian American students at BC."

Traveling (other than commuting) may not be Francesco Asano's main diversion in his gap year, but this is one sociology major who made his mark on the globe literally and in other significant ways during his undergraduate years at the college. Most recently, Asano used a $3,000 Tow Undergraduate Research Stipend to conduct preliminary ethnographic research on spiritual tourism in Iquitos, Peru. In 2016 he traveled as a Brooklyn College Rosen Fellow to Japan to interview animal rights activists. He remarks that what was significant about this trip abroad was "seeing Japan through different (sociological) eyes than when I had visited the country throughout my childhood and adolescence." Asano's heritage on his father's side is Japanese. His mother's family is Italian. "Sociology is great at both shattering blissfully ignorant impressions (which can be a buzzkill), and deepening your appreciation for a culture in its entirety."

On campus, Asano's holistic view was probably best manifested in his appreciation of the interconnectedness of all living things. He founded the club Brooklyn College Students for Animal Rights (BCSAR). In addition to promoting social justice actions such as a protest against a Canada Goose store opening in SOHO, educating to promote veganism with Friends of Animals United, and rallying to end the use of animals in circuses, BCSAR allied itself with other activists groups on campus to present a mini-conference, Activism, Social Justice and the Law, complete with vegan mac and cheese and Dun-Well, cruelty-free donuts.

Asano is as at home raising awareness of important social issues on the street as he is in an academic setting. According to Pan, “As a student-activist, Francesco learned to not only manage his commitments, but also tend to his intellectual pursuits (which were always poignant and critical—rivaling any graduate student)." In 2016 alone, Asano presented at two national conferences: the 15th Annual North American Conference for Critical Animal Studies at Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colorado, and the Mellon Mays Northern Eastern Regional Conference at Hunter College (CUNY) in New York. The following year, he presented at the CUNY Pipeline Conference, once again at the Mellon Mays Northern Eastern Regional Conference, and at the National Council on Undergraduate Research at the University of Memphis. His papers have challenged audiences with such provocative titles as "Whose Lives Matter: Anti-Black Racism in Animal Rights Organizing" and "Cecil, Harambe, and Antiblackness." Additionally, an undergraduate paper Asano wrote for Professor Kenneth Gould, "Anti-Blackness in the U.S. Animal Rights Movement," has been used in an environmental studies course at the University of California at Santa Barbara.

Asano co-moderated a 2017 conference, "The Cost of Freedom: Debt and Slavery." A poster session he presented has a title particularly relevant to the School of Humanities and Social Sciences. "Rising Voices in the Humanities and Social Sciences" reminds one of the conversations around the linking of the humanities and social sciences that proceeded, and followed, the original formation of the school in 2011. In earlier decades at Brooklyn College, the majors that fall under the humanities and the social sciences were housed in two separate schools. Asano also minored in philosophy and is happy to point out the connections between the two broader disciplines.

"The humanities and the social sciences both attempt to address the question of society and the human condition, but in different ways. The social sciences allow us to understand the systematic workings of a society that are often hidden or obscure to us. If all we had was our own individual experience, or what the television tells us, it would be very difficult to make an accurate and critical observation of the world. But with the social sciences, we are able to see our experiences in a larger social context. I think what the humanities pursues is something much more humanistic and embodied that can't be quantified—the nuances of human experience. While the social sciences give us the lens to understand and explain society in measured ways, the humanities attempts to capture the experience of living in that society, of being human in this increasingly chaotic world. You need both to get the full story."

Faculty from both humanities and social science, as well as Brooklyn College administrators, have helped strengthen Asano as an emerging scholar. Asano is grateful to Stephen Gracia, Acting Dean Kenneth Gould, Associate Professor Liv Mariah Yarrow, and Associate Professor Serene Khader for helping him with his Rosen Fellowship application and strengthening it to be a winning proposal. In addition to the Rosen Fellowship, though, Asano has distinguished himself with two Kitch Foundation Scholarships, the Christopher M. Kimmich Award, the Thomas Tam Scholarship, and membership in both Alpha Kappa Delta and Phi Betta Kappa.

Asano is now in the position of wondering what he should now do with his undergraduate degree in sociology. He was drawn in part to sociology because of his own interracial background. "Being mixed race," he says, "made identity formation a complicated and sometimes difficult process for me. Like it was something that I had to craft, explore, and perform, rather than it just being a fact of life or something I was certain of." Additionally, feeling alienated in a racially homogenous and racist town where he grew up, he felt forced to be more critical of the culture around him. One of the central arguments of sociology, Asano adds, "is that personal problems are actually public issues, so I was immediately captivated by it. It gave me a history and framework to make sense of my experiences and the world around me."

Asano's advice to others as well as to himself about the choice of major is "to be open to any opportunity, even if it isn't perfectly aligned with your long term vision….Sociology will enhance your capacity in any industry you enter, whether it be education, computer science, fashion, or biotechnology." Asano, who has considered a career in academia as a way to pay it forward, nonetheless notes that "it's just as important for socially conscious thinkers to build influence in other areas such as business, pharmaceuticals, and real estate where sociological thinking can be lacking."

Back to Critical Thinking — November 2018