Why Latvia?

In all honesty, I can't say that initially Latvia was my first choice for a semester away. Like it is for most of you, Latvia was hardly on my radar, though I am familiar with the Baltic states. When I lived in Michigan, I knew some expatriate Estonians who lived in Toronto, and the Baltics have always been one of those places that I thought, you know, I should go there some time.

But as it turned out, Latvia turned out to be an excellent fit. First, in its Fulbright listing, it was open to a wide range of language and literature teaching. Second, its contact person in the international office was diligent about connecting me with people, and that is three quarters of the battle. I explored and applied for a Fulbright fellowship the previous year and had a devil of a time finding contacts at various universities in Croatia, where I applied, when I had to do all the research myself and hope that I was maybe reaching the correct office. Third, the chair of the English program, Sandra Meškova, was also diligent about communicating and getting a letter of invitation for me (not always a requirement, but a good way to bolster an application).

So my job was to explain why I was a good fit for Latvia when I wrote my application. This required some serious thinking about what I offered Daugavpils University, and I think it's at this point that many Fulbright applications fail.

My grant comes in three types: one that is purely research, one that is purely teaching, and one that is some combination of the two. Research grants are probably geographically specific; if you're researching Romanesque architecture, for example, you probably will need to apply to work in the south of France. (Which would not be a bad thing at all.) Teaching grants, though, have a much wider range of possibilities; you can teach literature anywhere that might want you, so you're not necessarily limited by geography. Latvia seemed a good choice initially precisely because it's off the beaten path. As you might imagine, the competition to get a grant in the United Kingdom or France or Germany is hyper-fierce. The competition to get a grant in, say, Bosnia-Herzegovina is far, far less so. Many applicants, according to my colleagues who have served on review boards, don't quite get this; they apply for a grant in Italy because "it would be so wonderful to be in Italy." Well, yes, it would, but why should the State Department send you there?

Since one of my interests in American literature is American ethnic literature and in particular immigrant literature, I played that card. Because Latvia is only relatively recently an independent country, and one with a very sizeable Russian population, the issue of national and cultural identity is just as important there as it is here. Because the program I will be teaching in is primarily a linguistics program, with not a lot of focus on literature as literature, I suggested that such work in both English and American literature in identity and politics -- and in the history of the English language, which is really a course in cultural politics of language -- would sell very well in Latvia. Apparently, I was correct, because I am going.

So, applying for a teaching grant requires some hard thinking about what you bring to the whatever cultural table you hope to be sitting at. This work is really enjoyable, actually; it's fun to think about what you do and how it would play in other places where you don't know the culture as well as your own, and it's an excellent exercise to articulate this in a statement of purpose. And of course the real pleasure of teaching overseas is not the teaching. It's the learning on your part. Whatever I bring to the table, they will bring me much more.