 Dr. Mary Beth Sievens |
“What is an American?” Mary Beth Sievens, who teaches American history at SUNY Fredonia, will answer that question for Norwegian young people next year. She has received a Fulbright grant to be a roving scholar of American Studies in Norway from August to May 2007. Her teaching stints will focus on the question, “What is an American?”
The Fulbright award enables her to participate in the Norwegian Ministry of Education’s roving scholar program, where she will give workshops to middle and high schools on American studies around the country. “What they call American Studies is sort of a combination of English language studies, American history, politics and culture,” explained Dr. Sievens. She will also be team-teaching with the Norwegian teachers to present lessons directly to students.
A former social studies teacher, Dr. Sievens is focusing on American identities, particularly the notion “What is an American?” and how answering that question changes as the United States matures. “I would really like to show them that the ideas about what Americans are, what values they stand for, have been contested throughout history,” Dr. Sievens said.
“Different people at different times have had different ideas about what it meant to be American, about what values America should stand for,” she said. “Even today, we can see these same kinds of contests going on, these same kinds of disagreements. I think that will provide us with some good food for thought and discussion.”
Dr. Sievens is author of the new book, “Stray Wives: Marital Conflict in Early National New England,” published last fall by New York University Press. She earned her Ph.D from Boston University in 1997. Her specializations include early American history, American women’s history and adolescent social studies education methods. She will be joined in Norway by her husband, Chris, and son, Joshua.
The Fulbright Scholar Program was established by the Untied States Congress in 1945 and makes grants available to “…U.S. citizens and nationals of other countries for a variety of educational activities, primarily university lecturing, advanced research, graduate study and teaching in elementary and secondary schools” abroad, according to the Council for International Exchange of Scholars, the program’s administrative body. Over 40,000 American educators have participated in the program since its inception
