Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) Fellowships, Language Learning and Career Readiness скачать в хорошем качестве

Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) Fellowships, Language Learning and Career Readiness

ABOUT THE EVENT : Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) fellowships are federally funded scholarships that equip U.S. citizens, nationals, and permanent residents—both graduate and undergraduate—with critical language skills in Priority Languages, including many African languages. Through its long-standing collaboration with FLAS recipients, the African Studies Center (ASC) at MSU has strengthened African language education, producing experts whose linguistic proficiency advances U.S. national interests and benefits the countries where they work. FLAS fellowships transform language learning into global careers across government, academia, international organizations, the private sector, and civil society. This event brings together MSU FLAS alumni to share their language learning journeys and career trajectories, illustrating how FLAS fellowships enhance language proficiency, cultural fluency, and career readiness. Join us for an engaging discussion on the transformative power of language learning and its impact on professional success in an interconnected world. ABOUT THE SPEAKERS: Emily Jenan Riley (Moderator) is a full-time research professor at the Center for Asian and African Studies at El Colegio de México in Mexico City. She holds a PhD in cultural anthropology, specializing in African Studies and Gender in Global Contexts. She is a former assistant director of the Kansas African Studies Center at the University of Kansas. Her ethnographic research, conducted in Wolof and French for over fifteen years in Dakar, Senegal, focuses on cultural, religious, and political representations of Teraanga, the Wolof philosophy of generosity, hospitality, and sociability. Her manuscript, Teraanga Republic: Women's Authority and Politics in Senegal is due to be released with Indiana University Press on April 01, 2025. Dr. Riley is currently working on a new manuscript project regarding ajami texts and qur'anic schooling among the Layene in Senegal, Côte d'Ivoire, and Italy. Dr. Riley was a FLAS recipient at MSU for Wolof. Alaina Bur is the Assistant Director for global research at the Center for Gender in Global Context (GenCen) at Michigan State University. In her current role, Dr. Bur supports faculty and student-led research on gender and sexuality at Michigan State. Her personal research focuses on women's empowerment and sustainable water management in East Africa. In GenCen, she functions as the lead for all Africa-based collaborations with global gender centers. Dr. Bur was a FLAS recipient at MSU for Swahili. Dr. Tiffany Caesar is an assistant professor of Africana Studies at San Francisco State University. She calls herself a “Black Woman’s Archivist” due to her ongoing research on the preservation of transnational black women leaders and engagement with public history: Queen Mother Moore, Margaret Walker, and Phyllis Ntantala, to name a few. In addition to working on the SFSU College of Ethnic Studies 1968 Black Student Union/Third World Liberation Archive, she is finishing her book Archiving Africana Women Stories: African-Centered Education In South Africa and Detroit. Dr. Tiffany Caesar received the FLAS scholarship to study Zulu in South Africa which allowed her to further her research that included South African women who owned and operated African Centered Institutions and their roles in leadership. In 2019, she received her PhD in African American and African Studies with a graduate certificate in African Studies and Urban Education from Michigan State University. Robin K. Crigler is a Visiting Assistant Professor of History at Valparaiso University, and a historian of modern South Africa with a special emphasis on satire and stand-up comedy. He is currently working on his first books, Inevitable Satirists: Histories of South African Humour, 1910-1965, and an edited volume of audience-centered studies of African performance. Dr. Crigler was a FLAS recipient at MSU for Zulu. Dr. Maria Martin is a Black Studies Africanist and women and gender studies scholar at the University of California, Merced. She uses her training in Black Studies to inform her research which centers Nigerian women’s activism and intellectual history. She views Africa as a site of theoretical development where African cultures, philosophies, and cosmologies can be used to generate theories that can be used broadly. She is a Bill and Melinda Gates Scholarship alumna and has won several prestigious Fulbright awards in addition to receiving an honorable mention from the Ford Foundation for her research. She was also invited as a panelist for the 65th session of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women in 2021. Dr. Martin mentors academics in the US and internationally. While at MSU, she mentored girls from Detroit for years. In an effort to give back to communities where she gathers data, she co-founded an NGO to support students in Nigeria. Dr. Martin was a FLAS recipient at MSU for Yoruba.