English Professor Iclal Vanwesenbeeck, Biology Professor William Brown and Paul Chambers, an adjunct faculty member in the School of Music who has undergraduate and graduate degrees from Fredonia, have received Fulbright awards to teach, study or conduct research abroad.
Aleksander Xhuvani University in Elbasan, Albania, will be the destination of Dr. Vanwesenbeeck, recipient of a Teaching/Research Award for the U.S. Core Fulbright Scholar Program. She will teach courses in the English and German language departments during the Fall 2016 semester. Beginning in July, Dr. Brown, who has received the Fulbright Nehru Academic and Professional Excellence Fellowship, will be engaged in research at the Indian Institute of Science in Bengaluru, India.
The 2016-2017 Fulbright awards extend a remarkable line of achievement by Fredonia faculty in the distinguished international exchange program, said Ted Schwalbe, Fredonia’s Fulbright program coordinator. “We have had a tremendous record of success since 1981,” he said, that now totals 44 Fulbrights awarded to faculty members.
“In 35 years, that’s better than one a year, and is amazing for a college of our size,” Dr. Schwalbe remarked.
Mr. Chambers, who earned a M.M. in Percussion Performance in 2015 and a B.M. in Music Education in 2013, becomes the most recent Fredonian to receive a U.S. Student Program Study/Research Award. He will be immersed in African music and literature for nine months in a traditional research program in South Africa.
A faculty member of the English department since 2005 who teaches world literature and Renaissance courses, Vanwesenbeeck will focus on American drama and American women writers at Xhuvani, a public university comprised of five schools.
“Mysterious and fascinating” is how Vanwesenbeeck, who has traveled extensively throughout the Balkans and Europe, describes Albania. “It carries Ottoman Muslim influences, Greek and Byzantine influences, and it was a communist country for many years,” she explained. Years ago, one of Vanwesenbeeck’s first published articles was on the novels of Ismail Kadare, a leading literary figure in the predominantly Muslim country since the 1960s.
In addition to teaching duties, Vanwesenbeeck anticipates giving public lectures on American cinema, working on a collaborative project on modern Albanian theatre and also engaging in collaborations with theatre companies to stage American plays. Assisting with curricular and program development is also on her agenda. She will reside in Elbasan, the country’s fourth largest city.
“Today, as a NATO member and an EU candidate, Albania presents itself as a country that actively seeks reform and progress with USAID (United States Agency for International Development) programs in the health and judicial sectors, but certainly in higher education as well,” Vanwesenbeeck explained. “In this sense, collaboration between American and Albanian scholars could generate excellent opportunities for Albanian students; facilitate curricular development and cultural exchange,” she said.
Vanwesenbeeck’s award also renews Fredonia’s Albanian connection. Vilma Tafani, a linguistics professor at Xhuvani University, was a visiting Fulbright Scholar at Fredonia in the 2001-2002 academic year. She also spoke on campus in 2015.
For his Fulbright, Dr. Brown will undertake the project, “Inquiry-based science education; the behavior and ecology of insects in southern India” at the Indian Institute of Science’s Centre for Ecological Sciences. He will be engaged in collaborative research with Rohini Balakrishnan, an expert in bioacoustics and the nature of acoustical communication among insects in natural environments.
Brown has done extensive research on a tree cricket native to the Northeastern United States and southern Canada that’s very closely related to a tree cricket species that Balakrishnan has studied.
“I pursued a Fulbright at IISc specifically to engage in collaborative research with a colleague at the university who shares my research interests and is studying a system closely related to mine here but in the very different environment of tropical South Asia,” Brown explained.
“We are very excited about collaborating and adapting the experiment approaches on my work to her tropical Asian system,” Brown added. This will be his first visit to India.
The top-ranked Indian Institute of Science, a public university with about 3,500 students, is located in Bengaluru, the capital of the Indian state of Karnataka and third most populous city in India with over 8 million people.
Brown will also mentor graduate research students at the university and co-teach an undergraduate course in animal behavior. His Fulbright experience will conclude in mid-December.
A member of the Biology department for 15 years, Brown specializes in behavioral ecology, the study of animal behavior from an ecological perspective. At Fredonia, he teaches courses in ecology, evolution and introductory biology. Brown has a Ph.D. from the University of Toronto and an undergraduate degree from Simon Fraser University, British Columbia.
“A Rediscovery of Music in South Africa,” Chambers’ Fulbright U.S. Student Award, will take the Fredonia graduate to Rhodes University in Grahamstown, South Africa, in early June. Chambers was drawn to Rhodes by its International Library of African Music, a one-of-a-kind collection of African music literature and recordings. Its founder, Hugh Tracey, and his son, Andrew, a former director, are both highly respected ethnomusicologists and scholars of African music, Chambers noted.
The study of recorded music and examination of various xylophone traditions from across the country will lead to Chambers’ primary focus, the dinaka reed pipe dance of the Pedi people. He’ll spend nearly six months in Limpopo Province to learn and analyze all aspects of the dance. Chambers will also make recordings to be archived in the International Library of African Music and distributed to African musicians themselves.
“This genre of music is, thus far, largely undocumented,” Chambers reported.
Once initial research is completed, Chambers will reach beyond the university, with an arts festival and ethnomusicology symposium leading his priority list.
“I will engage in contact with the local people as much as possible to discover the roots of their music and learn in an authentic way. I will aim to see the culture first hand by living alongside the locals and see the cultural context of the music so that it can be preserved with respect to its original use and significance,” Chambers explained.
Chambers, who plans to pursue a career in music education, has always embraced African music as an effective teaching tool, and he’s already utilized skills acquired during three visits to Ghana. He recently toured as a member of the New World Percussion Group, performing at colleges and universities in four states.
In a broad sense, his goal is to spread awareness of the benefits of international exposure and communication. “I want to encourage people to become more globally cognizant and see what amazing stories people from around the world have to tell while also realizing that we’re all surprisingly similar, no matter where we come from,” Chambers explained.
“Sharing this music in new ways will also help preserve a small part of African culture at a time that many African communities are losing their traditions as western ideas become more widespread.”
Chambers joined the School of Music faculty as a sabbatical replacement for Karolyn Stonefelt, chair of the School of Music’s Percussion Area, for the spring semester.
