EOU FACULTY RECEIVE FULBRIGHT, HUMANITIES AWARDS

Published 12:00 am Friday, June 22, 2007

Four Eastern Oregon University faculty members have received competitive awards from the Fulbright Scholar Program and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Jill Gibian, associate professor of Spanish, Mark Shadle, professor of English and writing, and Jessica Plattner, assistant professor of art, were awarded Fulbright grants. Tonia St. Germain, assistant professor of gender studies, received an award from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

The Fulbright Scholar Program is the U.S. government’s flagship program providing funding for international research. The NEH is an independent federal agency that provides grants for humanities projects.

In March 2008, Gibian will travel to Montevideo, Uruguay, to pursue her love of the tango. She will also be on sabbatical leave, during which time she will complete a bilingual anthology titled, "Tango – Litt: Parodies of Passion," in which the tango is used as a literary motif.

As part of Gibian’s Fulbright award, "Translating National Identities: The Tango as Vehicle for Cultural Understanding," she will begin an oral history project on women and the tango. This project will focus on gender issues related to women and society.

"The tango is multifaceted and representative of the River Plate culture of Uruguay and Argentina," Gibian said. "There is always something more to study."

The River Plate, or Rio de la Plata, separates Uruguay and Argentina. Gibian is hoping that her husband and two boys, ages 10 and 12, will accompany her on the trip. She is equally excited at the prospect of what she will be able to bring back to her Spanish students at Eastern. Her affiliate while in Uruguay will be the Universidad de la Repblica.

Shadle’s Fulbright award will take him to Brazil this summer. He will travel with a group of 16 to 20 people from different backgrounds, all working on projects related to sustainability. The group leaves Monday and returns July 29. During that brief time, Shadle will cover a lot of ground, traveling from Manaus to Rio de Janiero and several other locations in between including Fernando de Noronha, an island owned by the Brazilian military.

The title of the broad Fulbright project in Brazil is "Learning and the Land: How Sustainable Development Can Build a Strong Educational Foundation." For Shadle’s part, he will be looking at Brazilian literature, music and the local craftsmen who make instruments. In preparation he is brushing up on the country’s politics and land use regulations.

"The disparity between the rich and the poor in Brazil is very high, but America isn’t that far behind," Shadle said. "There are very few old-growth trees left due to logging and cattle ranching."

For Shadle, the Fulbright award is the culmination of three NEH seminars he attended focused on written American Indian literature, the transatlantic slave trade and Mayan and Central American literature.

"This is a complete loop of the New World and Africa, and it’s exciting to be able to piece it all together," Shadle said.

Guanajuato, Mexico, is where Plattner will spend winter and spring terms next year. She will teach a self-portraiture class at the La Universidad de Guanajuato, which will also be offered at EOU this fall, and spend the rest of her time conducting research for a new body of work.

"It’s a big challenge," Plattner said of her newest project.

She will interview women and draw on the conversations to reveal personal stories in what she describes as "surreal, magical elements" in oil on canvas.

Plattner anticipates she will complete at least five portraits of women in the U.S. and five while in Mexico. Combined with her own self-portraits and several of her students’, she hopes to create a show in which each collection will "contradict the other and play with stereotypes," she said.

Plattner is the only visual artist among the 20 other scholars selected who are also conducting projects in Mexico.

St. Germain is one of 15 scholars from across the country to receive a grant to fund her expenses to attend a national NEH-sponsored seminar on the philosophical perspectives on law, democracy and human rights. She will spend close to one month in Atlanta for the conference, leaving July 8 and returning Aug.3. Georgia State University is hosting the event.

"This is a tremendous opportunity to share ideas and network with scholars from Princeton, Cornell and Oxford universities," St. Germain said.

The focus of the seminar ties into St. Germain’s current research on gender mainstreaming, violence against women and rape as a war crime. She uses the International Criminal Tribunal Yugoslavia as the case study and the "rape camps" in the Bosnian/Serbian conflict as an example of ethnic cleansing.

"This is a timely subject that is becoming more common in military conflicts as a human rights issue," St. Germain said. "Scholars are thinking how we will use the law to solve these problems."

St. Germain hopes attending the seminar will help her return prepared to submit a grant application to fund the production of a documentary film on the women lawyers involved with the Bosnian rape case.