Pan-African Studies Associate Professor Due to Teach in South Africa During 2000

As part of the prestigious award, Spencer-Walters will conduct graduate seminars on African-American literature, including the African Diaspora, at the University of Fort Hare.

His research project will focus on a comparative examination of voice as collective memory in African-American and South African literatures. That will allow him to use Fort Hare's extensive archival collection of literature on South African resistance movements.

Spencer-Walters is one of about 700 U.S. scholars to receive the award for the 1999-2000 academic year. He was in southern Africa five years ago as the Cal State University system's resident director in Zimbabwe. He plans to leave CSUN in January 2000 and return in December of the same year.

"We are very pleased that he has received this prestigious award, which is certain to bring distinction not only to him but to the faculty and the university as a whole," said Mack Johnson, associate vice president for graduate studies, research and international programs.

Begun in 1946, the Fulbright Scholar program offers grants for college and university faculty-as well as for professionals and independent scholars-to lecture and conduct research in countries around the world. Current participation involves more than 140 countries.

The goal of the program is "to increase mutual understanding between the people of the United States and the people of other countriesŠand thus to assist in the development of friendly, sympathetic, and peaceful relations between the United States and other countries of the world."

The primary source of funding for the program is an annual appropriation made by Congress to the United States Information Agency. Participating governments and host institutions in many countries and in the United States also contribute financially through cost-sharing.

Other recent CSUN Fulbright recipients included history professor Michael Meyer, who is lecturing and conducting research in Germany this spring, and educational psychology and counseling professor Stan Charnofsky, who lectured this school year in Estonia.