PITTSFIELD, Mass. — Berkshire Community College (BCC) Writing Across the Curriculum Coordinator Liesl Schwabe recently received a Fulbright-Nehru Award for Professional and Academic Excellence, part of the U.S. Department of State Fulbright Scholar program.

 

Schwabe will spend the 2024-25 academic year in Kolkata (formerly Calcutta), India, along with her husband and their 13-year-old daughter.

 

Fulbright Scholar Awards are prestigious and competitive fellowships that provide unique opportunities for scholars to teach and conduct research abroad. Fulbright scholars also play a critical role in U.S. public diplomacy, establishing long-term relationships between people and nations. Alumni of the Fulbright Program include 62 Nobel Laureates, 89 Pulitzer Prize winners, 80 MacArthur Fellows, and thousands of leaders and world-renowned experts in academia and many other fields across the private, public and non-profit sectors.

 

Schwabe's grant combines teaching and research. For the teaching portion, she will provide writing instruction to faculty, graduate students and undergraduates at various public universities across Kolkata.

 

"Kolkata is one of the most richly literary cities on earth. The 'boi mela,' or annual book fair, regularly sees more than two million visitors, and almost anyone on the street can recite Tagore at the drop of a hat. And yet, because the Indian educational system is based heavily on exams and rankings, there is not yet have a lot of pedagogical infrastructure to support writing," Schwabe said. "My hope is to create a Writing and Research Centre, available to consortium of institutions, and to train current MA and PhD students to work as writing tutors."

 

For the research portion of the award, Schwabe will continue her work on a collection of essays that highlight specific instances of American and Indian interdependence. The cornerstone essay examines both historic and contemporary productions of a play, known in English as "Rights of Man," which was written and performed in Bengali in 1968. The play recreates the trial of the Scottsboro boys, nine Black Americans who were wrongfully accused of raping two white women in Alabama in 1931.

 

"Ultimately, my book will look to explore the possibilities and limitations of solidarity, as evidenced through specific instances of material and social overlap between the United States and India," Schwabe said.

 

"I'm thrilled and honored to be a Fulbright Scholar," Schwabe said. "I look forward to sharing my findings with the BCC community and beyond, and I'm so grateful to BCC for supporting me in my journey."