Three George Mason University faculty members in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences (CHSS) have been selected as recipients of Fulbright U.S. Scholar Awards for 2023-2024.
Fulbright Scholar Awards are prestigious and competitive fellowships that allow scholars to teach and conduct research abroad in order to establish long-term relationships between people and nations.
Cher Weixia Chen, associate professor in the School of Integrative Studies, the founder of the Human Rights and Global Justice Initiative, a Senior Scholar of the Center for the Advancement of Well-Being, and a faculty fellow of the Institute for a Sustainable Earth, will be traveling to Canada for the fall semester of 2023 as the Fulbright Canada Research Chair in Human Rights and Social Justice at the University of Ottawa. She plans to use this time to work on her manuscript focusing on the cross-cultural analysis of prohibition against workplace sexual harassment. She will also explore potential collaborations with the esteemed Human Rights Research and Education Center at the University of Ottawa and investigate opportunities for partnership with the Social Justice and Human Rights programs at Mason, including the concentration, minor, and graduate programs, as well as the Human Rights and Global Justice Initiative.
"It is such an honor to be awarded as a Fulbright scholar. I am looking forward to making full use of this opportunity to establish strong research and exchange relationships that will not only benefit my own academic pursuits but also contribute to the advancement of Mason as an institution," she says.
Nathaniel Greenberg, associate professor in the Department of Modern and Classical Languages, will be traveling to Spain. While teaching a graduate seminar on Islam and the West, Greenberg will use this time to revise his current manuscript—focused on US public diplomacy in Arabic post 9/11. He hopes to tap into the cultural ephemera of Spain and learn about Spanish public diplomacy.
Greenberg also hopes this time aboard will reinvigorate his teaching and research. “My doctorate is in comparative literature, so I hope to refocus my interests and return to my roots as a comparativist for future research.”
Of Fulbright, Greenberg notes, “It’s a tremendous honor. We have a nice tradition in the Modern and Classical Languages Department of receiving Fulbright scholarships, so I am pleased to be carrying the torch.”
Mills Kelly, professor of history and director of the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media (RRCHNM), will be traveling to Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, Germany: the same university which awarded Kelly their Gutenberg Teaching Award several years ago, and where he spent a two-week residency in summer 2021. Kelly will be teaching two courses at the university: a course on the digital past, and a course on digital environmental history. Both courses offer unique opportunities for students to think more deeply and critically about history, as well as grow in their technological capabilities: the former has students build a website, and the latter will have students draft a pitch and a pilot episode for a new podcast.
“It’s always good to teach students who are accustomed to different education styles, because it forces you to think carefully about how and why you teach the way you do,” Kelly says.
Along with the opportunity to further hone his pedagogical skills, Kelly hopes that this opportunity will build upon nascent connections between Mason and Joannes Gutenberg University, for the betterment of faculty, staff, and students on both campuses. He will travel a month early to spend time in a digital history center in Luxembourg, which he hopes will allow for further internationalization of RRCHNM. “The connections I make will further the mission and reach of the work we’re doing in the Center, as well as establish lasting connections between Mason and Gutenberg that could lead to more opportunities for students and faculty in the future.”
In addition to the three CHSS faculty awarded 2023-2024 Fulbright U.S. Scholar Awards, two CHSS faculty members are currently abroad on as Fulbright scholars.
Debra Lattanzi Shutika, associate professor in the Department of English and director of Mason’s Watershed Lit Center for Literary Engagement and Practice, is completing a research and teaching Fulbright award in Ireland, where she is teaching folklore, field documentation, digital storytelling, and sense of place at the Mayo and Galway campuses of Atlantic Technological University.
Tiffany Thames Copeland, an adjunct faculty member with the African and African American Studies program, is spending the year in the Republic of Ghana, teaching communication classes at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology and studying the impact of Ghana’s “Year of Return, Ghana 2019” campaign.
“It has been quite a while that Mason has landed so many Fulbrights,” said Anne Schiller, Mason’s Fulbright Scholar Liaison and professor of anthropology in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology. “We should be very proud that our CHSS faculty are being recognized for their excellence in this way.”
April 07, 2023
