Director of Yeshiva College Writing Program Will Teach Writing and Conduct Research in Kolkata, India
Liesl Schwabe, lecturer in English at , has been awarded a Fulbright-Nehru Academic and Professional Excellence Fellowship. The seven-month grant will support Schwabe as she teaches several writing classes and conducts research at Presidency University in Kolkata, India.
Liesl Schwabe, lecturer in English, has been awarded a Fulbright-Nehru Academic and Professional Excellence Fellowship to teach English writing courses in India.
Schwabe, who is also director of the writing program at Yeshiva College, draws from a long fascination with India; she has written extensively about Indian history and culture and studied there as an undergraduate. At Presidency University, Schwabe will teach classes that look to integrate memoir and personal experience within the context of more outward-looking research, guiding students to examine and share their perspectives on different aspects of their identities, from religious and economic to caste and even linguistic. Her own research will focus on the process of teaching in English in post-colonial India.
鈥淚 write a lot about religious pilgrimage in India and how that concept has evolved with the rise of the Asian middle class,鈥 said Schwabe, whose work on the topic has appeared in . 鈥淚鈥檓 excited to write more about my experience of teaching and how that impacts my understanding of language, English, and the global Anglophone audience. Writers across the Indian diaspora and across the subcontinent are having a global moment. Many people in India are raised speaking English and are totally fluent. At the same time, many others believe the language continues a colonial dichotomy because it鈥檚 mainly accessed by more affluent citizens. I鈥檓 going to be looking to my students at Presidency to help me understand how they and their writing can add to that conversation.鈥
Schwabe felt that her experience overseeing the writing program at Yeshiva College contributed to her success as a Fulbright candidate. 鈥淚 have loved teaching here so much, in large part because I realized that teaching writing as an outsider has often been how I strengthen my students' voices,鈥 she said. 鈥淭here isn鈥檛 that assumed familiarity of someone from the inside. My years teaching here gave me confidence to apply to the Fulbright, because I was able to say, 鈥楴ot only do I feel excited, but I also feel prepared.鈥 My students at YU have helped me become a better teacher because they鈥檝e helped me know the right questions to ask to draw out that story.鈥
The prestigious award is also a reflection of the caliber of Schwabe鈥檚 scholarship and writing. 鈥淚 have a foot in both worlds鈥擨鈥檓 a creative writer but I teach in an academic institution and those can feel like very separate worlds,鈥 she said. 鈥淭his Fulbright feels like a recognition that there can be overlap there, which gives me more confidence in my teaching and writing. It鈥檚 also such an exciting moment for personal narrative that it means a lot to have the opportunity to be involved in that as people around the world get to read and write more to learn about one another.鈥
鈥淎s an educator and writer of real vision, Liesl Schwabe seems to me the ideal Fulbright lecturer: an instructor who can help to improve students鈥 writing skills in a world in which 鈥榞lobal Englishes鈥 are increasingly essential to upward mobility; fundamentally strengthen students' ability to marshal writing in a changing world; and provide colleagues with direction and inspiration in the teaching of writing,鈥 said Dr. Joanne Jacobson, professor of English and associate dean for academic affairs at Yeshiva College. 鈥淪he is an outstanding writing instructor, a skillful writing program administrator, and a talented writer of nonfiction. I am proud that she will be going to India from the Yeshiva College Department of English.鈥
Liesl Schwabe, lecturer in English, has been awarded a Fulbright-Nehru Academic and Professional Excellence Fellowship to teach English writing courses in India.
