Focus on America

Scholars, students bond in 6-week programs of academics and travel

Each year, small groups of students, scholars and teachers come to the United States to encounter the country up close through short, intensive programs of study and travel sponsored by the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs.

International scholars and academics who are active in some aspect of American studies are chosen to participate in one of eight Study of the United States Institutes:

• Contemporary American Literature

• Religious Pluralism in the United States

• American Politics and Political Thought
• Journalism and the Media

• U.S. Culture and Society
• U.S. Foreign Policy

• U.S. National Security Policymaking
• Study of the U.S. for Secondary School Educators

Each institute is hosted at a different U.S. university selected through an open competition. Sessions typically run for six weeks each summer, with about 18 participants per session. (The Institute on National Security Policymaking at the University of Delaware takes place in January and February.)

The university directors of the institutes acknowledge that they pack much reading and study into their programs. But they also try to give participants time to meet Americans outside the academic sphere.

“I never thought so much could be done in such a short period of time,” said Khalid Aludayli of Jordan, who attended the Contemporary American Literature Institute in 2006.

Most of the institutes are structured around four weeks of study at the home university, followed by a trip to three cities — one of which is always Washington — that offer very different social and cultural experiences.

Scholars and academics interested in the Study of the United States Institutes don’t apply directly, but through the U.S. Embassy in their home country.
The State Department also sponsors institutes for student leaders, which now number 23 summer sessions on nine college campuses, along with three winter institutes. Each student program focuses on a particular area of study — from environment and new media to religious diversity and social entrepreneurship — but all include sessions on leadership and community service. Several are conducted entirely in Spanish.

As with the scholar institutes, individuals apply for the student leader institutes through their local U.S. Embassy.

DEALING WITH DIVERSITY

A common thread linking all of the institutes is exposure to America’s social and cultural diversity. Take the Institute on Religious Pluralism in the United States, held at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

The institute’s focus is not religious faith itself, but how a pluralist model works in a society like the United States, according to Wade Roof, professor of religious studies, who serves as the institute’s academic director.

“We want to expose them to the American religious and cultural experience,” Roof said. “Then we ask the question, Can this model offer something for you back in your home country?”

Along with a packed classroom schedule, the participants in 2009 — largely university professors of religion, philosophy and social science — explored America’s varied religious landscape.

Just in the Santa Barbara area, with a population of 400,000, they visited a Christian megachurch, an Islamic mosque, and a Buddhist center.

A trip to Los Angeles encompassed the Islamic Center of Southern California, Our Lady of Angels Catholic Cathedral and the Hare Krishna Temple. They explored Mormonism and the landmark Mormon Temple in Salt Lake City, Utah, and the Ebenezer Baptist Church, where Martin Luther King Jr. worshipped, as well as the Hindu Temple of Atlanta in Georgia.

Their trip concluded in Washington with a visit to the National Cathedral and a meeting with the White House Office of Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships.
In last year’s Contemporary American Literature Institute, members observed San Francisco through the lens of the modernist novel The Crying of Lot 49, by Thomas Pynchon, and the Asian-American memoir of storytelling and family The Woman Warrior, by Maxine Hong Kingston.

A trip to Santa Fe, New Mexico, opened doors to the nation’s Latino and American Indian literary traditions.

Director Byers has also increased representation by Arab-American and South Asian writers with authors like Naomi Shihab Nye and Jhumpa Lahiri. One underlying message in all the readings, he observed, “is how stories create identities.”

STUDENT LEADERS

The student leader institutes seek to provide an in-depth view of U.S. society, according to Mark Protti of the Institute on Training and Development in Amherst, Massachusetts. They also offer a variety of leadership training exercises.

Protti manages the six student leader institutes for the Western Hemisphere. He is conducting a program at Amherst while overseeing two other winter institutes, one at the University of Tennessee, the other entirely in Spanish at the University of Arizona.

A typical day begins with two 90-minute lectures and discussions, followed by afternoon visits to local state agencies or nonprofit organizations. Among them: a session of the state Supreme Court, a senior assisted-living facility and an animal shelter for abandoned pets.

All the institutes conduct study tours. The Amherst students travel to Tucson, Arizona, and the Tennessee students to Atlanta, Georgia.

The Arizona students, whose program focuses heavily on American Indians in the southwest, visit Boston and New York. All three institutes then rendezvous in Washington for tours and group presentations of their experiences to the Department of State.

As important as the formal programs are, the participants invariably cite the personal encounters and friendships as their most memorable experiences.
“Staying with American host families was one of the most amazing parts in the program, where we really related to American culture and daily life,” said student-leader participant Ahmed Omar Afifi of Egypt. “[We] had a full chance to really discuss our religious and political views — and even favorite food, music and sports on both sides.”

Asked what he learned in his 2008 student leader program, Ummar Zia of Pakistan said, “Rather than going for imagined uniformities, we ought to celebrate diversities.”

THE EXCHANGE EFFECT

Many participants find that among the most memorable aspects of the program are the peers they encounter from elsewhere around the world.

“When I met 17 other participants from 17 other countries, I was fascinated,” said Yukio Wang of China, who attended the Institute on Contemporary American Literature at the University of Louisville in Kentucky. “We would respond quite differently from different perspectives, but there still are so many things in common.”

Thomas Byers, professor of English and director of Louisville’s American literature program, sees the same pattern. “They can really bond through the cross-cultural experience of encountering a foreign U.S. culture together,” he said.

Many participants carry new approaches to the teaching of American studies when they return home.

Aludayli said that he had designed and taught a new course on African-American literature in Jordan. The institute, he said, “enhanced our confidence to be ourselves in the midst of these diverse cultural differences. ... I returned home a more confident professor of languages and literature.”

The Institute on U.S. Foreign Policy, held at the University of Florida in Gainesville, takes an unconventional approach by focusing less on traditional topics like NATO or U.S.-China relations, and more on the often-misunderstood domestic factors that influence policy — whether Congress, states, lobby groups, or diaspora communities like that of Cuban Americans.

“I’ve changed my syllabus completely and moved toward domestic sources of U.S. foreign policy,” said Pawel Frankowski, who teaches political science in Lublin, Poland. “My students are surprised when I focus on the military and lobbies instead of great strategy.”

Abdullah Al-Asmary, who teaches languages and literature at King Saud University, recalled a saying from a professor who addressed their institute for secondary-school educators in 2008.

The professor’s adage: “The goal of education is not to fill students up with information, but rather to enable them to become fully engaged in the subject matter.”
Al-Asmary said, “Whenever I stand in front of my students, I ask myself — how engaging will this task be?”

Shahbaz Israr Khan of Pakistan, who studied at a 2008 student leader institute in Vermont, said, “When I came to America, I was Pakistani, but when I left, I found myself a human being, a citizen of the world.”

By Howard Cincotta
Special Correspondent

For more information see these pages:

• Study of the United States Institutes for Scholars
• Study of the United States Institutes for Student Leaders
• Study of the U.S. Institutes for Student Leaders/Western Hemisphere
• Institute on U.S. Foreign Policy
• Institute on Religious Pluralism in the United States
• Institute on Contemporary American Literature
• Institute of U.S. National Security Policy Making
• Institute of American Politics and Political Thought
• Institute on Journalism and Media
• Institute on U.S. Culture and Society
• Study of the U.S. for Secondary School Educators