Carnegie Mellon University
June 21, 2012

David Shumway Receives Fulbright Award

By David Golebiewski

David Shumway Receives Fulbright Award

David Shumway, Carnegie Mellon University Professor of English, has won a Fulbright grant to Spain for the upcoming academic year to teach two courses in American Studies. Shumway will lecture at both the University of Barcelona and the Autonomous University of Barcelona.


“It is very gratifying to be chosen to represent my country abroad and to have the chance to experience life in another culture,” Shumway said. “In an increasingly small world, these kinds of person-to-person contacts that are fostered by exchange of faculty are ever more important.”


The Fulbright Program is a government-sponsored international exchange program that awards merit-based grants to students, scholars, teachers and professionals. The program is active in over 155 countries worldwide.


“It’s important for me as a faculty member at Carnegie Mellon to have the experience of teaching students from a foreign country,” Shumway said. “Living in that country and learning about their perceptions of us, but also learning about how life is lived differently there.”


Shumway said he will likely teach one course on American Literature and another on aspects of American film and culture. He hopes to touch upon the American culture of the Great Depression.


“I think it’s an especially important course to teach now in Spain, which is having severe economic difficulties on parallel with the 1930s here,” Shumway said.