NGCSU Professor awarded Fulbright
Grant to be used for
travels to Ukraine
From
Gainesville Times
Published on: January 26, 2008
By Jeff Gill
DAHLONEGA —
An English professor at North Georgia
College & State University has been awarded a Fulbright
grant to travel to Ukraine in April to teach a seminar on
American literature.
Eric Link, who specializes in pre-1900s
American literature, will spend a five-week residency at
Lesya Ukrainka Volyn National University in Lutsk, Ukraine.
In addition to teaching, he also will
consult with faculty members on issues of program and
curricular development.
Link received the grant through the
Fulbright Senior Specialists Program, which focuses on
encouraging new activities that go beyond the traditional
Fulbright Scholar 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," Link
said.
He’ll be working with faculty members in
Lesya’s Department of Romance and Germanic Language and
Literature.
They "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," Link said.
He said he believes that his European
counterparts are "now where they’re really interested in
breaking away from (a) rather rigidly prescribed set of
approved texts and developing a larger sense of what’s out
there."
Link said he is looking forward to the
experience. "I’ve never been to Ukraine. I’ve never really
taught outside the United States."
He said he doesn’t speak Ukrainian or
Russian.
"I’m trying to teach myself a few words
to get by: please, hello, thank you and so forth," he said.
"But the ... instruction will be in
English. The colleagues at the university that I’ll be
working with closely are fluent in English and teach
American literature themselves.
"So I suspect I’ll be in good hands."
Link, 40, has taught more than 20
classes, mostly in American literature, for 11-plus years at
North Georgia.
Link has been published more than 40
times, including as the author of "The Vast and Terrible
Drama: American Literary Naturalism in the Late Nineteenth
Century" and the co-author of "Neutral Ground: New
Traditionalism and the American Romance Controversy."
His third academic book, "Understanding Philip K. Dick,"
is scheduled for publication in 2009 from the University of
South Carolina Press.
From
www.gainesvilletimes.com/news/article/2931/
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