2000 Fulbright Summer Institute in American Studies for University Educators

Vision and Purpose of the Summer Institute:

        This Institute presents human migration along waterways as a key to understanding the cultural, political, and social development of the USA and the problems and rewards of a diverse society. Four waterways, representative but by no means all encompassing, provide the Institute's structure: the Atlantic, the Great Lakes, the Mississippi River, and the Pacific. Each waterway carried people--Indians, Europeans, Africans, and Asians--at first into North America and then to various points on the land. Those migrants created settlements as diverse as the ancient Mississippi city Cahokia, the Atlantic seaboard's plantations and colonial cities, the great lakefront cities like Chicago, and the late-twentieth-century multicultural metropolises like Los Angeles and New York. In moving along waterways and establishing themselves in North America, migrants, pioneers, laborers, and citizens created sites that were in various ways responses to their access to a river, lake, or sea. But also on waterways developed some of the salient features of American culture: the encounters among peoples of different races, ethnicities, and nationalities; the conflict between colonials and Europeans over the nature of political institutions; the initial Americanization of political institutions; the reform movements of the antebellum era; the growth of an industrial nation requiring that labor, raw materials, and finished goods move efficiently to and from factories; and the development of a nation that is at once increasingly urban, committed to political equality across ethnic, gender, and race lines, and itself the postindustrial leader of the global economy. Water has long been symbolic in American life, too, whether through baptism, or the retention of West African water spirits, or the "green" sense that uncorrupted nature is essential to the human spirit. Intended to assist international faculty by being representative and suggestive, not comprehensive, this Institute will range from social history issues like migration, mortality, and settlement, to cultural and political developments in constitutionalism, reform, religion, and literature, to late-twentieth-century challenges in education and civic life. In general, the Institute's organizers see it as adding to standard themes in American history an emphasis on the fundamental qualities of water and human movement and on the religious and artistic dimensions of migration, settlement, and nation-building in the USA.

Western Michigan University Faculty:

Dr. Tom Bailey, Department of English
Dr. Jose Brandao, Department of History
Bonnie Jo Campbell, MFA, WMU, fiction writer
Dr. Michael Chiarappa, Department of History
Dr. Kevin Corder, Department of Political Science
Dr. William Cremin, Department of Anthropology
Dr. Kenneth Dahlberg, Environmental Studies
Dr. Douglas Davidson, Department of Sociology
Dr. David Dickason, Department of Geography
Dr. Howard Dooley, Director of International Affairs
Stuart Dybek, Department of English, Fiction Writer
Dr. James M. Ferreira, Department of History
Dr. Harold Glasser, Environmental Studies Program
Dr. Vyacheslav Karpov, Department of Sociology
Dr. Trent Kyniston, Department of Music, Saxophonist
Dr. Elena Lisovskaya, Departments of Education and Professional Development
Dr. Irma Lopez, Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures
Dr. Vin Lyon-Callo, Department of Anthropology
Dr. Michael Nassaney, Department of Anthropology
Dr. Neil Pinney, Department of Political Science
Dr. Gwen Raaberg, Director, Program in Women's Studies, Professor of English
Dr. Chester B. Rogers, Department of Political Science
Dr. William Santiago, Department of Communication, Director of Institute on Race & Ethnicity
Dr. Peter Schmitt, Department of History
Greg Smith, PhD Candidate, WMU
Dr. Kristin Szylvian, Department of History and Director of Maritime Museum
Dr. Gwen Tarbox, Department of English
Dr. Von Washington, Department of Theatre, Director of Black Theatre

Fulbright American Studies Institute Fellows:

ANGOLA
        Mr. Marques SEBASTIAO
            Deputy Director
            Institute of Languages
            Angolan Ministry of Education
         ilinguas@snet.co.ao

BRAZIL
       Ms. Claudia MESQUITA
           Assistant Professor of English & Literature
           Federal University of Bahia
          mesquita@cfh.ufsc.br

BULGARIA
       Ms. Roumiana Balinova TODOROVA
           Head, English Department & Senior Lecturer
           Shoumen University
         r_todorova@yahoo.com

CHINA
        Mr. WANG Jianping
            Associate Professor & Director of American Studies Center
            Northeast University
         jpwang@ramm.nev.edu.cn

COLOMBIA
        Ms. Claudia LOMBANA
           Assistant Professor of English Language & Literature
           National University
         chlomgi@latino.net.co

EGYPT
        Ms. Hanaa Mohamed EL-GOHARY
            Associate Professor, Sociology Department, Faculty of Arts
           Cairo University
          hhanaa@nightmail.edu

HUNGARY
        Ms. Magda AJTAY-HORVATH
           Associate Professor, Department of English Language & Literature
           Nyiregyhaza College
          sc_ajtay@wmich.edu

INDONESIA
        Ms. CHADIDJAH
           Head, American Studies Center & English Department
           University of Sumatra

KAZAKHSTAN
        Ms. Bakhyt TOGYSBAEVA
           Senior Instructor, English Language Department
           Taldykorgan State University

LITHUANIA
        Mr. Marijus SIDLAUSKAS
           Associate Professor, American Studies Center
           Klaipeda University

MEXICO
        Mr. Daniel LEMAS Contreras
           Program Coordinator, English Center
           University of Sonora, Caborca Campus
         danlemas@yahoo.com.mx

NIGERIA
        Mr. Onookome OKOME
           Senior Lecturer, Department of Theater Arts
           University of Calabar
          sc_okome@wmich.edu
 

POLAND
        Ms. Anna LETOWSKA-MICKIEWICZ
            Deputy Head of English Teacher Training College
            Warsaw University
         annaletowska-mickiewicz@mercury.ci.uw.edu.pl

SRI LANKA
        Ms. Nayani Samarasinghe MELEGODA
           Director of Studies, Faculty of Graduate Studies
           University of Colombo
         nmelegoda@yahoo.com

TANZANIA
        Mr. Eliah S. MWAIFUGE
           Teaching Assistant, Department of Literature
           University of Dar Es Salaam
         eliahmwaifuge@hotmail.com

TUNISIA
        Mr. Nabil BEDOUI
           Assistant Professor of English, Faculty of Letters
           University of the Center
          sc_bedou@wmich.edu

VENEZUELA
        Ms. Edith C. MALAGARRIGA Gonzalez
           Director of U.S. Study Unit
           Center for the Study of the Americas and the Caribbean

VIETNAM
        Ms. Le Thi Thanh HOA
            Head of the Linguistics & Cultural Section, English Department,
              College of Sciences & Humanities
              Hue University
         sc_hoa@wmich.edu

Sites of Interest:

The White House: http://www.whitehouse.gov/

The Ellis Island: http://www.ellisisland.org/

Chicago Architecture Tour: http://www.architecture.org/

Tenement Museum: http://www.tenement.org/

Henry Ford Museum: http://www.hfmgv.org/

Metropolitan Museum of Art: http://metmuseum.org/

Chicago Historical Society: http://www.chicagohs.org/chshome.html

Art Institute of Chicago: http://www.artic.edu/

Women's Right Museum: http://www.nps.gov/wori/

Menno-hof Museum: http://www.mennohof.org