Campus Connection

Three UWL Fulbright scholars prepare for worldly projects in 2016-17

Three people from UW-La Crosse have earned financial awards through the prestigious Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program. They’ll travel to locations across the world during the 2016-17 academic year to help solve global challenges related to communication, culture, history and international crime. Gita Pai, assistant professor of History, will travel to India to study one of the country’s most popular sculptural symbols that has also become a stolen commodity on global markets. Sara Docan-Morgan will teach communication classes in South Korea where universities are increasingly placing a strong emphasis in understanding of U.S. culture. And UWL Alumnus Erik Reitan, ’15, will be a teaching assistant in Germany. The three are among the more than 1,200 U.S. citizens who will teach, conduct research and provide expertise abroad for the 2016-17 academic year through the U.S. government-sponsored program. The Fulbright international exchange program works to build relationships between people from the U.S. and other countries that are needed to help solve global challenges. Recipients of Fulbright awards are selected on academic and professional achievement, as well as service and leadership in their respective fields. Including Pai, Docan-Morgan and Reitan, seven from UWL have earned Fulbright awards while on campus since 2009. UWL is looking to increase those numbers, says Miranda Panzer, UWL’s Fulbright U.S. Student Program adviser and Fulbright Scholar representative. Docan-Morgan’s visiting lectureship in South Korea [caption id="attachment_45986" align="aligncenter" width="685"] Sara Docan-Morgan received the Fulbright U.S. Scholar Award to South Korea for a visiting lectureship at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies.[/caption] Sara Docan-Morgan, associate professor of Communication Studies, aims to increase international understanding of communication in the U.S. while teaching at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies in South Korea. Understanding of U.S. culture is increasingly seen as a marketable skill for Korean students, she says. She hopes her Korean and American background will shine a light on the complexity of identity for Americans. “Korea is such a monoracial country,” she says. “I want my students to see there is not one definition of what it means to be Korean or American because I see myself as both.” Docan-Morgan was adopted from South Korea at four months old. She says the trip will lend to her scholarly work on Korean adoption. She’ll also be able to use Korean adoption as a platform in her classes to discuss broader topics such as family, economics, culture, identity and race. Docan-Morgan says the trip will also be meaningful personally. It has been her lifelong goal to live in Korea and spend time with her biological family there. Her husband and children will travel with her. She anticipates living in a foreign country will improve her own cultural competency, and be a life-changing experience. “I feel like a part of me will be awakened that hasn’t been before,” she says. “I’ve grown up here where the predominant pressure is to be normal, and normal means to be white, think white and talk white. I’m comfortable in that space, but I feel like I want to engage more with the culture that I was born in and of my ancestors. I think the more I know about Korea, the more proud I will feel of being Korean, and I want to give that to my kids as well.” Docan-Morgan has a strong record of professional achievements. She is a 2014 recipient of the UWL Provost's Teaching Award, the UWL College of Liberal Studies Excellence in Teaching Award, and has been honored by the UW System as an Outstanding Woman of Color in Education. She has been published in some of the top journals in communication and relationships such as: “The Journal of Social and Personal Relationships,” “The Journal of Family Communication” and “Adoption Quarterly.”  She also has demonstrated sustained interest in Korea both personally and professionally. Her UWL committee work has focused on issues of diversity and inclusiveness. Pai goes to India Gita Pai received a Fulbright fellowship to do research in India for her doctoral dissertation as a graduate student, so she didn’t expect to earn another as an assistant professor in UWL’s History Department. “I was pleasantly surprised when I learned that I passed the first round, and shocked when I received the award a few months later,” she says. Pai speculates her proposal may have been strengthened by a book project she is working on that has connections to the research she plans to do. Pai received a Fulbright award to explore 9-12th century bronze depictions of the Hindu god, Shiva Nataraja, in the south Indian state of Tamil Nadu. The sculpture is an important part of India’s history and culture, yet the theft of Shiva Nataraja and other Hindu artifacts has become a serious problem in Tamil Nadu. Metal representations of this god have appeared in south Indian temples since the ninth century. Over the years it has become one of India’s most popular sculptural symbols. Pai’s project examines Shiva Nataraja as art, a ritual and devotional object, and the embodiment of Indian culture in international museums. She also will study how it has been a bought, sold and sometimes stolen commodity on global markets. Pai, who teaches the history of South Asia and World History at UWL, says the project will also be useful back on campus. It incorporates worldly topics such as transnational crime, international museums with Asian collections and the global art market. Pai says this research stems from a written work in progress, “Stone Bodies, Colonial Gazes, and Living Goddess: Re-Imagining a Temple in South India.” The piece traces the historical transformations of a religious structure at the Minakshi-Sundareshvara temple, Madurai in Tamil Nadu. Both her work related to the temple and the sculpture focus on how the superficially same religious entities have radically shifted as different actors have used and understood them in changing historical contexts. Pai plans to present portions of her research to colleagues in such venues as the Association for Asian Studies, World History Association, and American Academy of Religion Annual Conferences and at UW-La Crosse’s Faculty Research Day. Her ultimate goal is a published book. — Past UWL Fulbright Scholars from 2009-14:

• Robert Jecklin, 2013-14
• Carol Miller, 2010-11
• Heidi Morrison, 2013-14
• Soojin Ritterling, 2009-10