Victor Olayemi Alaran Amoo

Class of 2005
Concentrator: African and African American Studies
Email: victoramoo@post.harvard.edu

What is your favorite memory of your experience in the Department of African and African American Studies (AAAS)?

My favorite experience is tied between the Nobel Laureate Program honoring Wole Soyinka and African Theater Night in the Thompson room. However, what I will remember most are my near weekly chats with Program Officer Terri Oliver. She helped me navigate through the AAAS program and served as an invaluable resource during the thesis process.

What was your favorite course that you took in the AAAS Department?

AAAS 91r: African Language Tutorials. My Yoruba language tutorial was intense and drove toward mastery of the language in a short period of time. We gained conversational proficiency in the language in one short year. The same feat in French took me nearly seven years.

Was there anything that surprised you about your experience in the Department?

I was surprised by the flexibility of the concentration. The Department was very accommodating and helpful. From my experience in a larger department, I was surprised by the more hands-on nature of the AAAS Department.

Is there anything about African and African American Studies that you think is unique?

What I have found unique is the degree to which the Department takes undergraduate concerns seriously. The African Language Program, through an initiative started by the Department, has been extremely dynamic because it adds new tutorials every semester based on student demand. The program also constantly seeks critiques and criticism to ensure that students are learning the language and gaining proficiency. This candor extends to all aspects of the Department, which allowed students to participate in its review by scholars from across the country. Students were encouraged to give frank accounts about their experience in the Department. This serious commitment to continued growth will ensure that it remains the best African and African American Studies department in the world.

When and why did you decide to become a concentrator in African and African American Studies/Afro-American Studies?

I decided to become an AAAS concentrator in my senior year of college. My decision to join the Department resulted from a confluence of factors. In my junior year, I studied abroad in Paris, France. Apart from my mandatory economics and French grammar courses, I chose all my other coursework on French-African relations and literature. After taking the survey course “Historical Studies B-52 Slavery and the Slave Trade” my freshman year, I was convinced of my expertise in African American Studies because it was combined with my prior knowledge. In France, that notion was quickly and powerfully erased as I was first exposed to the Francophone African diaspora. A new world of study opened up for me, for example: the history of Rwanda; the Negritude Movement; thinkers like Fanon; writers like Cesaire; and leaders like Senghor. While abroad, I also read Native Son for the first time and was dumbstruck over how a writer could capture such poignant issues and emotions of the black experience a half-century ago that are still as relevant today. I quickly realized there was a great deal more for me to learn in African and African American Studies.

At the same time, I was growing increasingly frustrated with the lack of attention and resources devoted to African and African American issues in my own concentration, Economics. As I embarked on my thesis, I felt that there were only a few economists with expertise in Africa, and those that did focus on this area often had fairly narrow research interests. In my junior year, the African and African Studies Department began to offer an African Language Tutorial. After completing my French citation, I was free to start a new language. I was pleased to find they offered Yoruba, my parent’s native language. Given these three reasons, I decided to join AAAS, and found the Department extremely welcoming.

What do you plan to do after graduation?

Immediately after graduation, I will be working in the fixed-income division of a New York investment bank. However, in the future I plan on returning to graduate school. AAAS has definitely had a huge impact on my plans. Prior to joining the Department, I had only considered returning to school to obtain a professional degree from law school or business school. However, now I am considering pursuing a master’s degree in a more purely academic field of study. For the longer term, it has also made me more cognizant of and dedicated to the issues within the African and African American community.