Faculty members Denise Scott (left) and Jun Okada have received Fulbright Awards for the spring 2019 semester. Scott will be in India. Okada will go to Portugal.
GENESEO, N.Y. – Two SUNY Geneseo faculty members have received highly competitive Fulbright Awards for the Spring 2019 semester.
Denise Scott, professor of sociology, will conduct research at the H.N.B. Garhwal University in Srinagar, India, and Jun Okada, associate professor of English, will teach and conduct research at the Escola Superior de Teatro e Cinema, Instituto Politécnico de Lisboa, in Lisbon, Portugal.
During her tenure from about February to May of 2019, Scott will conduct a research project titled “Student Aspirations and the Construction of Gender, Class and Nation in Northern India.” She will interview students at both H.H.B. Garhwal University and Doon University in Dehradun and will focus several research questions: 1) To what extent, and how, do non-urban, non-elite college students’ aspirations and attitudes reflect and legitimize the hegemonic standards established by the New Middle Class in India? Additionally, how does gender affect the aspirations and attitudes of students and thus reflect and reinforce dominant constructs of the ideal Indian woman and man? 2) How do college students’ aspirations and attitudes affect their well-being and empowerment in and out of the home? 3) What are the implications of these findings for reinforcing or diminishing class and gender distinctions and inequality?
Okada’s award period is from about March until May of 2019, during which she will teach a course on American contemporary cinema that provides “a strong historical framework and cultural context to a selection of films that epitomize American values, countercultures and controversies.” She also will conduct archival research in the Cinemateca Portuguesa=Museu do Cinema in Lisbon on the history of the exhibition of American films, their censorship and their reception by the Portuguese public during various period of cinema's history since the 1890s. She will examine such questions as how Portugal sees itself in relation not only to larger European nations but to the United States and how the Portuguese cinematic viewing habits reflect that.
Scott’s and Okada’s awards bring to 11 the number of Fulbright or Fulbright-Hayes awards Geneseo faculty members have received in the past eight years.