Editor’s note: This story is part of Dispatches from Abroad, a series highlighting UChicago community members who are researching, studying and working around the world.
The Fulbright Program, described by the U.S. Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs as “the flagship international academic exchange program sponsored by the U.S. government,” seeks to encourage “mutual understanding between the United States and other countries.”
Recipients of Fulbright support—such as recent college graduates, graduate students, professors and education professionals—conduct research, share their specialized knowledge or teach English abroad.
“It’s life-changing,” said Jennifer Jenson, a Germanic Studies Ph.D. student, of her experience as a Fulbright scholar in Germany from September 2022 to September 2023.
From 2019 to 2023, 90 University of Chicago students accepted Fulbright grants. Hear from three recent Fulbright scholars about their time in Germany, Egypt and Japan.
Engaging with local culture in Germany
For Jenson, her time abroad changed the focus of her research. Inspired by conversations with fellow scholars at the Free University of Berlin—as well as her serendipitous attendance at a multimedia dance event titled Knitting—Jenson reoriented her dissertation toward the influence of textile production on German artists and writers in the 1970s and 1980s.
“Professionally, my research goals changed in ways that were very productive,” said Jenson, who also won the 2021 Gutekunst Prize of the Friends of Goethe New York, an award given to outstanding young translators of German literature into English.
She explains that the ability to engage with local culture by going to museums and performances gave her “a different understanding of the people I interacted with, a different understanding of the historical context and what people’s values were.”
In addition to the professional benefits, she says, “personally, spending a year abroad—in a country that I already cared about deeply—allowed me to have an even more intimate relationship with people. This all facilitated an intercultural exchange that’s so important in the modern world.”
“I loved my time abroad,” Jenson said, “and would do it over and over again.”
Cultural exchange in Egypt
Erin Atwell, AM’17, also appreciated the emphasis on the interpersonal element of her research. The Ph.D. student in the Department Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations and Anthropology traces the concept of taqwa (godfearingness) through classical Islamic texts into modern-day Muslim practices.
Interacting with fellow scholars in Egypt was an important way for her to gain insight into how local people interpret taqwa in textual sources as well as how they invoke it in their everyday, contemporary experience. Fulbright contacts in the country helped her gain research clearance from the state and facilitated her conversations with Islamic studies scholars.
She joined religious activities at Al-Azhar Mosque, known colloquially as the Muslim Vatican for its historical importance to Sunni Muslim learning. And at other religious institutions, she attended book groups and cinema clubs that encourage taqwa as an antidote to atheism and religious-based violence, which are perceived as a “dual extremism” threatening Egyptian society today.
Atwell received faculty accommodations and access to the campus and library of the American University in Cairo, which was particularly meaningful because she brought along her three-year-old daughter. Watching her child engage with other children and with local food traditions was another layer of the cultural exchange she valued.
“The personal impact that doing research in another place provides is often invisible. Something that was quite beautiful about the Fulbright,” she said, was that its goal to promote cultural exchange is “rendered explicit” rather than imagined as a tangential benefit to a researcher working abroad.
Firsthand discussions in Japan
For Anthony Stott, a Ph.D. candidate in Comparative Literature and East Asian Languages and Civilizations, traveling to Japan allowed for unique firsthand dialogue with important figures in his field of study while also encouraging him to continue an extracurricular pursuit he’d begun during the pandemic: taking lessons in Noh, the traditional Japanese dance-drama genre.
In his application for the award, he had proposed Noh lessons specifically to bolster the cultural-exchange piece of his project, which focused on scouring libraries and used bookshops for issues of Critical Space (a Japanese journal published from 1991 to 2002), visiting architectural sites, and interviewing sources. He also worked with a mentor at Waseda University in Tokyo.
Like Jenson, Stott benefited from a fortuitous turn of events that made one encounter especially memorable. He explains that few Japanese scholars have written about cultural criticism in the late twentieth century, so firsthand discussions with critics themselves are vital—the kind of window onto the subject that you can’t get by “flipping through a lot of used periodicals.”
In one case, the timing of the exchange was particularly good. He had set up an interview with Kojin Karatani, one of Critical Space’s coeditors and its most frequent contributor, just before it was announced that Karatani had won the Berggruen Prize, a million-dollar award given annually to someone whose ideas “have provided wisdom and self-understanding in a rapidly changing world.” Nevertheless, Stott believes that Critical Space has been underrecognized for its importance to Japanese criticism, and he appreciated the chance to ask about the philosopher’s memories of the publication and the shifts in his thinking during its run.
Atwell, Jenson, and Stott all recommend the Fulbright Program to others who may be looking to experience life outside the U.S., even if they have studied abroad before. Atwell and Jenson both describe how wonderful it was to have a network of supportive Fulbright connections on the ground, ready to help them navigate challenges of any stripe. Stott says his 14-month-long Fulbright experience also contributed to a greater sense of ease in everyday life in Tokyo after a previous period of language study in Japan.
“The familiarity got me,” he explained. “At a university, it can be hard to know about events taking place out in the world at large,” but during his period of Fulbright study, he felt better informed about events happening around him and more comfortable exploring them.
Jenson revealed one final benefit from her experience as a Fulbright scholar: “When I arrived back in Chicago, she said, “I felt a deep sense of home and it was really lovely.”
—This story originally appeared in Tableau, the magazine of UChicago’s Division of Humanities
—Prof. Jacqueline Stewart
