
May 17, 2024
Last summer, Ethnic and Race Studies major Joely Castillo flew to Salvador, Bahia in Brazil as a Study Abroad scholar at Borough of Manhattan Community College (BMCC/CUNY).
“The trip was led by Professor Judith Anderson, and she guided us in using a deep anthropological lens to understand Afro societies, such as Quilombolas, which means Maroon society,” Castillo says.
She explains that in America, the term “Maroon” refers to people who have escaped colonization or enslavement and have created their own free societies.
“They had these really successful Maroon societies in Brazil, the largest recorded globally,” she says. “Today there is still a deeply Afro population in Brazil, especially in Savador, Bahia, which had been an entry point for people forced into the slave trade.”
A cultural anthropologist and researcher, Professor Anderson has been a mentor to Castillo, working closely with her as a classroom instructor and through Study Abroad.
In addition to having led the Summer 2023 trip to Brazil, Professor Anderson will lead a group of BMCC students, including Castillo, in Study Abroad Argentina in Summer 2024.
“Joely has a lot of innate curiosity. She has a genuine interest in cultural differences and a profound respect for other people,” Professor Anderson says. “As I tell my students, the role of a cultural anthropologist is to help one group of people understand another group.”
She adds that it takes “a certain type of personality to do that successfully, to have meaningful interactions and conversations with people whose ideas and ways of living are fundamentally different from your own.”
Professor Anderson also points out that students who experience both Study Abroad trips—Brazil and Argentina—will gain valuable comparative insight.
“Brazil is the second most populous Black nation on Earth, next to Nigeria,” says Professor Anderson. “It’s ‘Africa in the Americas’, and you see such strong cultural retention there.”
On the other hand, she says, “Argentina is known as the ‘white nation’ of South America. How amazing it is, to have this contrast as part of your education at BMCC.”
Sometimes serving a community means making a safe place for people to speak their mind
In addition to taking part in Study Abroad at BMCC, Joely Castillo was named a Kaplan Leadership Program (KLP) Scholar of the Kaplan Education Foundation at BMCC, and was a finalist for the Jack Kent Cooke award.
Castillo has also been a member of the NYU GUIDE program, a partnership between NYU’s Gallatin School of Individual Study and BMCC.
She has served as secretary of the board of the BMCC Association and Auxiliary Enterprises Corporation, as well as having been appointed as treasurer in the 2023-2024 Student Government Association (SGA).
A recent activity that stands out for her is having co-hosted, alongside fellow SGA members, a Social Justice Week event, part of a program organized by BMCC’s Race, Equity and Inclusion (REI) leadership committee and members.
“We had a roundtable talk, ‘Difficult Conversations,’” says Castillo. “We wanted to make it family-style, so we provided an open buffet of food. We wanted the participants to feel comfortable to voice their opinions, and I was proud and grateful that they shared their deep observations about the school, be they positive or negative.”
For example, Castillo says, “Some of the students were talking about the fact that we need to share more of our campus resources far and wide, deeper than just emails. They said a lot of folks don’t tune into their emails, so they miss out on things like the Wellness Center or Counseling Center. As a community, we can address things like that.”
A child struggles to read then grows up to earn a 4.0 GPA and garner acceptances from Ivy League colleges
“I think it could serve folks to know that I haven’t been a stellar student my whole life,” says Joely Castillo. “I currently hold a 4.0 GPA, but I once had low confidence in the classroom. I didn’t learn to read till I was in the third grade.”
She links that delay to having moved a lot, as a child.
“I had been in the Dominican Republic two or three years and when we came back to the States, I was the age of the other third graders, but I wasn’t able to read,” she says.
A teacher’s aide helped her process what was happening in the classroom.
“I was excited to be there, eagerly raising my hand—but I didn’t know what the expectations were,” she says. “I got scolded and retreated into my shell. I felt like I was ten steps behind my classmates, though I caught up in about a year.”
Now a nontraditional student—age 27 when she enrolled at BMCC and graduating at age 29—Castillo says she loves reading and musical theater, as well the field of anthropology.
“I’ve been living on my own since I was 18,” she says, adding that her family has moved to Florida.
During her time in New York, Castillo has worked as a nanny.
“I’ve been with the same family for eight years,” she says, “so I deeply care about domestic work and the value of care work. I think it keeps societies going and deserves more props, more attention, more laws protecting domestic workers, especially immigrant domestic workers.”
In the years between high school and college, self-education is a focus
Before entering BMCC and focusing on cultures around the world, Joely Castillo focused on the cultural influences around her.
“I loved J Dilla, MF Doom. I was analyzing music, films by Wong Kar-wai. I was reading bell hooks, Cormac McCarthy, Richard Wright,” she says. “I was hungry to be in a deeply intellectual space.”
As this article goes to print, a number of colleges have accepted Castillo for the fall.
“I’ve been accepted into Princeton University, Brown University, Smith College and others—full rides including tuition, room and board,” she says with some amazement. “I have also been accepted with full tuition scholarships to NYU, Bard College and Mount Holyoke College.”
Eventually, her goal is to earn a Ph.D. in Cultural Anthropology, with a focus on Latin American and Caribbean-Afro societies.
“I would like to do research in DR, my own country,” she says. “My family is from DR and Haiti. I want to use a documentary lens to partner with my cultural anthropology studies, so I can document the African diaspora in the Americas and the Caribbean.”
“I really didn’t fully find my confidence till I was at BMCC,” says Castillo. “Now I feel so positive about what I can accomplish.”
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
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Last summer, Ethnic and Race Studies major Joely Castillo flew to Salvador Bahia, Brazil as a Study Abroad scholar at BMCC; in Summer 2024 she will attend Study Abroad Argentina
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Both trips are led by cultural anthropologist, researcher and Ethnic and Race Studies professor at BMCC, Judith M. Anderson
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Castillo intends to earn a Ph.D. in cultural anthropology; Fall acceptances have arrived from Princeton University, Smith College and more—with full scholarships attached