Rochester Faculty Awarded Fulbright Grants

Two University of Rochester faculty members are recipients of Fulbright Scholar grants for the 2005-2006 academic year. Patricia Herminghouse, the Karl F. and Bertha A. Fuchs Professor Emerita of German Studies, and Elias Mandala, professor of history, were each awarded grants to support research, study, and teaching in other countries.

Mandala will teach a course and deliver several lectures at the University of Zambia beginning in January. In addition, he will conduct archival and oral research in Malawi, Mozambique, South Africa, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.

Mandala will spend most of his research time on the social history of the Magololo servants of the famous missionary and explorer Dr. David Livingstone. The Magololo, who hailed from Zambia, settled for a time in Mozambique and, after rebelling against Livingstone, established themselves as conquerors and chiefs in Malawi in the mid-nineteenth century. In addition, Mandala is doing a study of Malawian migrant laborers in South Africa and Zambia.

A member of the University of Rochester faculty since 1983, Mandala is a historian of southern Africa, focusing on agricultural, food, gender, labor, and other rural issues. His book Work and Control in a Peasant Economy: A History of the Lower Tchiri Valley in Malawi, 1859-1960 was a finalist for the 1990 Herskovits Award presented by the African Studies Association. His most recent book, The End of Chidyerano: A History of Food and Everyday Life in Malawi, 1860-2004, was published by Heinemann in October and explores the relationships among food, hunger, and politics.

Herminghouse was a member of a group of American Fulbright scholars who participated in a seminar on "Recent Trends in Contemporary German Literature" in June and July. The seminar group traveled to Berlin, Leipzig, and Hamburg to meet with German publishers, critics, writers, theater professionals, academics, and other members of the country's artistic and cultural communities. Herminghouse is arranging a series of follow-up panels, composed of both German and American seminar participants, for the 2006 annual conference of the German Studies Association.

Herminghouse has edited or co-edited more than a dozen books, including the widely used textbook Frauen im Mittelpunkt: An Anthology of Contemporary German Women Writers. She was a founder of Women in German, an organization known internationally for promoting feminist scholarship of German literature and culture, and was co-editor of the Women in German Yearbook from 1994 to 2002. She has served on the editorial boards of numerous other journals and continues to consult across the United States and abroad.

A former president of the German Studies Association, Herminghouse is currently researching the status in German literature of works written by the youngest generation of writers who were born in East Germany and how these authors are taking on the role of "public intellectual" to speak on contemporary social and political issues.

The Council for International Exchange of Scholars administers the Fulbright Scholar Program for faculty and professionals. Each year, the program sends some 800 U.S. faculty and professionals to 140 countries to lecture, do research, or participate in seminars to increase mutual understanding between people of the United States and those in other countries.