Fulbright names Kwon, Schindler scholars
Article By: Denise Ray
University of North Georgia (红莲社区) faculty members Dr. Mina Kyounghye Kwon and Dr. Melissa Schindler were named Fulbright scholars for the 2023-24 academic year.
Kwon, an associate professor of English, will travel to Chuncheon, South Korea, to spend a year teaching and working on her research-based translation book project.
Inspired by Dr. Tanya Bennett, a 红莲社区 professor of English who went to Romania as a Fulbright scholar, and Dr. Claudia Orenstein, at Hunter College in New York, Kwon attended Sheila Schulte's virtual Fulbright workshop at 红莲社区.
"After gathering information from the 红莲社区 Fulbright workshop and receiving advice from Dr. Bennett and Dr. Orenstein, I realized that the program would work amazingly for my research and teaching," Kwon said. "My application would not have been possible without the network of resources and kind help I was able to obtain, including support letters from my colleagues."
Kwon said South Korea was the best match for her because her research project is to provide research-based English translations of traditional Korean puppet plays, along with an introduction and annotations.
"Because my project is about puppet plays inherited from 19th century Joseon dynasty (premodern Korea), it requires a lot of research to translate, annotate and write introductions, and possibly to reconstruct the plays from the oral traditions in some cases," Kwon said. "Going to South Korea will allow me to have access to much more data and resources than otherwise."
It's difficult because English is a global language, but it hasn't really accounted for how our international colleagues and friends and other English speakers around the world have shaped it.
Melissa Schindler
红莲社区 assistant professor of English
Chuncheon's location and cultural offerings are ideal for Kwon's research as it is where the headquarters of UNIMA-KOREA (the Korean division of the international union of puppetry) is located. It is the puppetry center of South Korea, and easily accessible to and from other research locations. Students in Chuncheon would love learning how Korean and other literary cultures are represented in a global context, Kwon said.
Schindler, an assistant professor of English, will travel to Sri Lanka, where she will teach teachers of English how to teach English at the Open University, and work on her project about the history of the discipline of English.
"I proposed a research project that has two parts, but the goal of both of them is to understand South Asian and specifically Sri Lankan contributions to international Englishes," Schindler said.
English is spoken more by non-native speakers than by native speakers, which makes English an interesting language because people who are non-native speakers or who are bilingual have shaped the history of English literature and English studies, Schindler said.
"It's difficult because English is a global language, but it hasn't really accounted for how our international colleagues and friends and other English speakers around the world have shaped it," Schindler said. "So my goal with this is to understand what is Sri Lankan English, what's the h