(Media-Newswire.com) - WASHINGTON - Five GW professors have been named Fulbright Scholars for the 2008-2009 academic year.  Steven Balla, associate professor of political science, will lecture on regulatory policy in China and the United States at Peking University in Beijing; Christopher L. Cahill, associate professor of chemistry, will research collaborative studies of lanthanide materials at Cardiff University ( United Kingdom ); James Arthur Miller, chair of the University's department of American studies and professor of English and American studies, will lecture on and research black Atlantic literature at the University of Witwatersrand ( Johannesburg ); Sarah Orndorff, assistant professor of global health, will lecture on and research gender, law, and transition in Albania at the University of Tirana ( Albania ); and Brian Victor Rowe, assistant director of GW's Career Center, will join the U.S.-Germany International Education Administrators Program seminar at the German-American Fulbright Commission in Berlin.

GW also will host 10 visiting foreign professors to teach and research at GW during 2008 - 2009 academic year through the Fulbright Scholar Program.  Vanashree Banerjee ( Banaras Hindu University; India ) and Yuming Piao ( Yanbian University; China ) - Columbian College of Arts and Sciences; Irina Bystrova ( Russian Academy of Sciences ), Muttukrishna Sarvananthan ( Point Pedro Institute of Development; Sri Lanka ), and Lifang Song ( Renmin University of China ) - Elliott School of International Affairs; Jae Min Lee ( Hanyang University; Seoul ) and Vasyl Nepyivoda ( National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine ) - GW Law School; and Leonard Damien Laborie ( University of Paris-Sorbonne ) - School of Media and Public Affairs.  Imtithal Abdullah M. Althumairi ( King Saud University; Saudi Arabia ) and Hiromi Ehara ( Teikyo University; Tokyo ) also will join the university as Visiting Fulbright Scholars. 

Since its establishment in 1946, under the legislation introduced by GW Law School alumnus and the former U.S. Sen. J. William Fulbright, L.L.B. '34, the Fulbright Program has provided approximately 286,500 people with the opportunity to observe each others' political, economic, educational, and cultural institutions; to exchange ideas; and to embark on joint ventures of importance to the general welfare of the world's inhabitants.  The program has enabled 108,160 Americans to study, teach, and research abroad, and 178,340 students, scholars, and teachers from other countries to engage in similar activities in the United States.  The program operates in more than 155 countries.

The Fulbright Program, America's flagship international educational exchange program, is sponsored by the United States Department of State, Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs.  Financial support is provided by an annual appropriation from Congress to the Department of State, with significant contributions from participating government and host institutions in the United States and abroad.  The presidentially appointed J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board formulates policy guidelines and makes the final selection of grantees.

For more information about the Fulbright Program or the U.S. Department of State's Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, visit http://fulbright.state.gov.

For more news about The George Washington University, visit the GW News Center at www.gwnewscenter.org.

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Professor Vanashree Banerjee is currently with us at GW from the Department of English at Banaras Hindu University through a Fulbright Visiting Scholar Fellowship. Professor Banerjee is currently teaching one course, English 173.11, Modern and Contemporary Indian Drama. Before coming to GW, Professor Banerjee has been teaching for almost twenty-four years, and has been widely published in Indian and international journals. In addition to Postcolonialism and Indian Drama, Professor Banerjee has research and teaching interests in Anglo-American fiction, feminism, contemporary literarure in English, American Drama, Shakespeare, Post-Structuralist theory, and American Poetry. Professor Banerjee's latest book, co-edited with Sukbir Singh, Twentieth Century American Fiction: T.S. Eliot's Children (2006), is concerned with the ubiquitous presence of The Waste land in twentieth century fiction. The book contains eighteen essays by American and British writers and brings tothe fore the knowledge that American novelists have been continuously inspired by Eliot's innovative literary techniques. In addition to GWU and Banaras Hindu University, Professor Banerjee has taught at Jawaharlal Nehru University and the Indian Institute of Advanced Studies, Shimla. We at the GW English blog welcome her to GW, and we look forward to seeing the contributions she will make to our intellectual community.

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