DAHLONEGA (Jan. 23, 2008) – Eric Link, professor of
English at North Georgia College & State University, has been awarded a
Fulbright grant through the Fulbright Senior Specialists Program. He will
travel to Ukraine in April to teach a seminar on American literature to
Eastern European students and consult with their faculty on issues of
program and curricular development.
Link, who specializes in pre-1900 American literature,
will spend a five-week residency at Lesya Ukrainka Volyn National University
in Lutsk, Ukraine.
“The faculty members in the Department of Romance and
Germanic Language and Literature are interested in doing some program
evaluation, developing their curriculum, and getting some advice on what
some of the trends are in the teaching of American literature and in
American literary scholarship,” says Link.
The Fulbright Senior Specialists Program is developed
for professors in higher education to take short-term academic opportunities
of two to six weeks. It focuses on encouraging new activities that go beyond
the traditional Fulbright responsibilities of lecturing and research.
“I’m really anxious to see how people from a very
different part of the world and a different culture, where English is a
second language, respond to some of the texts in American literature that I
teach here in the states all the time,” says Link. “So for my own
intellectual curiosity, I’m really looking forward to hearing what they have
to say about American literature.”
Link admits he has much to learn about his European
counterparts before he engages them, but his perception after communicating
with the university is that Ukraine has had a rigidly prescribed curriculum
in English literature. Historically, there has been certain literature
approved for teaching and certain literature that has not.
“I think they’re at the moment now where they’re really
interested in breaking away from this rather rigidly prescribed set of
approved texts and developing a larger sense of what’s out there. That’s one
of the tasks I’m going to help them with.”
Link’s professional experience in his more than 11
years of teaching at North Georgia is extensive. He has taught more than 20
unique courses, the bulk of which are in American literature, but which also
include British literature, genre classes, composition and special topics
courses. Among those categories, Link has shown how adept he is at teaching
a wide variety of topics, from Southern literature to postmodern fiction to
science fiction.
The Purdue-educated professor has been published more
than 40 times, writing scholarly journal articles, book chapters, academic
books, encyclopedia articles, critical introductions and reviews. He is the
author of “The Vast and Terrible Drama: American Literary Naturalism in the
Late Nineteenth Century” and is the co-author of “Neutral Ground: New
Traditionalism and the American Romance Controversy.” He is also the founder
and editor of the journal ALN: The American Literary Naturalism Newsletter,
which is published at NGCSU and distributed to scholars of American
literature worldwide. His third academic book, “Understanding Philip K.
Dick,” is scheduled for publication in 2009 from the University of South
Carolina Press.
