Two W&M professors receive Fulbrights

Two College of William and Mary professors were recently awarded Fulbright Scholar Program grants to conduct research abroad.

Timothy Barnard and Cindy Hahamovitch will travel to France and Ireland respectively at the end of the year to teach and conduct research projects during the Spring 2008 semester.

Barnard, visiting assistant professor of American studies and English and coordinator of Mellon projects in the humanities, will research Franco-American film relations and history, specifically French reception of Hollywood cinema in the 1920s. Hahamovitch, associate professor of history, will teach a graduate course on U.S. Immigration History at University College Cork.

Barnard’s research will also benefit his work on the Williamsburg Theater Project, a Web site database of local film exhibition and reception that is part of the international History of Motion Picture Exhibition and Reception Project. Barnard’s grant is co-sponsored by the Franco-American Commission for Education Exchange, and he will be hosted by ARIAS, a research consortium of scholars from the Sorbonne Novelle (Paris III), the École Normale Supérieure, and the Centre National de Recherche Scientifique.

“Participating in this Fulbright exchange will create the perfect opportunity for me to pursue my research goals as an American studies and film scholar dedicated to global perspectives,” he said. “It will also allow me to expand my interests in both transnational American studies research and global and local film reception studies.”

In addition to teaching at University College Cork, Hahamovitch will seek to inform her larger research on international labor migration and will work on a document reader, which is an edited collection of primary sources, or historical documents, for use in history classes. She also plans on learning more about the history of migration out of and into Ireland.

“Ireland is certainly more diverse now that it was when I studied there as a sophomore a quarter century ago, and I'm particularly interested in comparing the Irish and American responses to recent immigration,” she said.

The Fulbright Scholar Program is sponsored by the Department of State and sends 800 U.S. faculty and professionals abroad each year. Grantees lecture and conduct research in a wide variety of academic and professional fields, according to the Web site.

The program was established in 1946 as a result of U.S. Senators J. William Fulbright’s vision for a program that would increase mutual understanding between the peoples of the United States and other countries through the exchange of persons, knowledge and skills.

Since 1984, 36 William and Mary faculty members—from departments ranging from Biology to history to English -- have received Fulbright grants.