Carolyn Supinka (BHA’13) Earns Fulbright Research Grant in India

Recent graduate, Carolyn Supinka, received a research and study grant through the Fulbright U.S. Student Program. Starting in August this year, Carolyn will spend 9 months researching in Pondicherry, India.

During her time in India, Carolyn will gather conversations and interviews from both tourists and natives at local sites. Specifically, Carolyn plans to visit Sri Aurobindo’s Ashram and Auroville, among other locations, to conduct these interviews. By collecting these shared experiences and narratives, Carolyn hopes to “create a work that transcends cultural boundaries and investigates both sides of this cultural exchange.”

Carolyn graduated from Carnegie Mellon’s Bachelor of Humanities and Arts Program with a focus in both creative writing and visual art. Much of Carolyn’s undergraduate work revolved around the theme of “finding answers,” both visually and verbally. For her Senior Honors Thesis, Carolyn created a series of poems and prints she titled Q & A. Carolyn used the Yahoo questions as the starting point for questions to explore through her art.  When it came time for Carolyn to decide what to do after graduation, she felt that the next iteration of this intellectual journey resides in India.

 “The narrative of Westerners ‘finding answers’ in India has been a prevalent theme in literature, pop culture, and real life,” Carolyn states. “I wanted the chance to study this journey to enlightenment more closely.”

Through her studies at CMU, Carolyn cultivated many skills as a student artist and writer, but she looks forward to her time India as a way to expand on those skills. According to Carolyn, “I know how I work as a student, now I have a chance to develop my own individual method of working in the real world.”