American Councils, CRRC and ARISC present the 14th talk in the Spring 2014 Works-in-Progress Series!
Chase Stoudenmire, University of Arkansas and NSEP Boren Fellow
“U.S.-Georgian Educational Exchange: A Recent History”
Wednesday, 21 May, 2014 at 6:15pm
EPF/CRRC-Georgia, Kavsadze St. 3, Tbilisi
This paper chronicles the establishment of new and re-purposing of preexisting U.S. state-sponsored educational exchange programs with the newly independent states of the former Soviet Union. Focusing on Georgia, this study extends the story of American state-sponsored exchange programs to the present day, probing which (if any) of the prevailing narratives of Cold War exchange and American cultural expansion are supported by events following the collapse of the Soviet Union. Drawing from interviews with exchange alumni, U.S. and Georgian government officials, NGO managers, and archives from the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, this study considers questions of purpose, impact and perception in Georgia, the “poster child” of American exchange in the post-Soviet space. As a recent history, this project also engages questions of historical methodology, interrogating the potential for interdisciplinary techniques and alternative conceptions of historical distance to extend the discipline’s boundaries.
Chase Stoudenmire, an NSEP Boren Fellow, is a graduate student in the Department of History in the J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Arkansas. Stoudenmire is an Alumni Ambassador for the U.S. Student Fulbright Program and previously served as a 2010-2011 Fulbright ETA in Kutaisi, Georgia. Stoudenmire combines his interests in history and higher education, studying U.S. public and cultural diplomacy during the Cold War with an emphasis on educational exchange. Stoudenmire holds a master’s degree in Higher Education from the University of Arkansas, a bachelor’s degree in History from the University of South Carolina, and a Cambridge CELTA. Chase maintains a topical blog at chasestoudenmire.us.
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W-i-P is an ongoing academic discussion series based in Tbilisi, Georgia, that takes place at the Eurasian Partnership Foundation at Kavsadze St. 3. It is co-organized by the Caucasus Research Resource Centers (CRRC), the American Councils for International Education: ACTR/ACCELS, and the American Research Institute of the South Caucasus (ARISC). All of the talks are free and open to the public.
The purpose of the W-i-P series is to provide support and productive criticism to those researching and developing academic projects pertaining the Caucasus region.
Would you like to present at one of the W-i-P sessions? Send an e-mail to natia@crrccenters.org.
