Boren Scholarship Essays

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1. Rationale: Explain the significance of your proposed study abroad experience (including the region you selected, its culture, and the language you will study) to U.S. national security, broadly defined. Describe how the country, language, and study abroad program you selected will help you achieve your academic and career goals, including your plans to fulfill the service requirement.

SIT's Durban-based program focuses on social and political transformation in South Africa. I hope to study the use of community arts as a tool of reconciliation, bringing what I've learned back to US cities like Baltimore. I believe community art contributes to non-military national security because it improves our society, culture and economy by fostering an environment of tolerance.

Durban is ideal for exploring art as social change on a global level. The city has had an active community arts scene since the 1970’s, and is now home to organizations like “Art for Humanity” and “Create Africa South,” whose missions are to use art to “promote human rights awareness regionally and globally” and to “develop, preserve and publish, exhibit or market South African creativity, both in the visual and literary arts." These mission statements run parallel with my own academic and artistic interests.

As a community artist in inner city Baltimore, I have become aware of my city’s physical racial divides, as well as the psychological separateness of the “other”. Racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance are finely knit into the fiber of Baltimore. Just outside my window last week, a white man screamed derogatory ethnic slurs and death threats at my black neighbor during an argument. I called the police, and now am being subpoenaed to court as a witness.
Our national security relies on tolerance and understanding between people of diverse ethnicities. Homeland crime is perpetuated by organized hate-groups and gangs, as well as everyday individuals. South Africa's 1995 Truth and Reconciliation Commission inspires my study and work as a community artist. It is my goal to use art to create public dialogue revealing the wide spectrum of oppression, privilege and inequality in our own country in an effort towards reconciliation.

SIT's program will enable me to study in South Africa's townships and stay with a Zulu family, becoming immersed in their language and culture. I feel this cultural and linguistic understanding will greatly enrich my collaborative work with inner city Baltimore communities, especially Baltimore's large population of African refugees. In Durban, I will be able to do research one-on-one with South Africans, allowing their stories to be primary source information for the work made. Collecting oral histories is an academic interest of mine that developed last semester during a class I took Johns Hopkins, titled "Race and Community in East Baltimore." Sponsored by the Center for Africana Studies, the class was part of a five year oral-history project attempting to preserve East Baltimore’s ill-archived history before it was erased by gentrification.

Baltimore's economic class divide is not unlike that of post-apartheid Durban, and although I am no economics major, I am interested in role of the arts in economic development. In his book "Rise of the Creative Class", Richard Florida proposes that cities with high concentrations of artists correlate with a higher level of economic development. Florida suggests that attracting and retaining a "creative class" is the best use of a city's regeneration resources for long-term prosperity. What attracts creative individuals and industries to a city? Ethnic diversity, multiculturalism, and tolerance, Florida states. I believe engaging a community in collaborative art builds an environment of tolerance in which ethnic diversity and multiculturalism thrive.

The arts can also help provide minorities and the urban lower class with access to creative industries and new jobs. The 2007 Research Consortium on the Creative Industries of South Africa stated that "the Accelerated and Shared Growth Initiative of South Africa (ASGISA) has now identified the creative industries, and particularly the craft and film sectors, as one of the identified drivers of sustainable economic opportunities and livelihoods for local communities whilst expanding business opportunities for small, medium and micro enterprise (SMMEs)." In his 2010 State of the Union Address, President Obama recently emphasized small businesses and grassroots organizations as crucial to America's economic success. A strong economy is a necessary component of our national security, especially when considering the relationship between poverty and crime.

In the holistic development of a country, however, culture and the arts are equally important as economic and physical needs. By investing in the arts at home and abroad, we invest in a more peaceful, tolerant global society. I am interested in pursuing this effort through my study abroad experience and my career. With interests in the fields of arts and culture, social justice and international relations, I am considering government jobs like museum work (curatorial, exhibition development), art therapy, youth programming, community planning, equal employment, peace corps recruitment, and foreign service.

2. Study Abroad Program Description (both the preferred and alternate program): Describe the study abroad program’s course of study and related cultural activities, as well as the administrative and support services provided (i.e., facilities, housing, resident director, etc.). Describe the language component in as much detail as possible, including the number of classroom contact hours and informal language study opportunities outside of the classroom. Describe your past experience in studying or speaking the language (or another language if relevant), as well as your plans for continuing to study and/or speak the language following your Boren Scholarship.

In this interdisciplinary program, lectures and discussions in the Social and Political Transformation seminar aim to provide students with a solid grasp of the historical background of South Africa's apartheid system, contemporary developments leading to the dismantling of that system, the visions for post-apartheid South Africa, the political, economic and social structure of the future South Africa, and an anthropological and cultural look at South African society. A central premise of the seminar is the interconnected nature of issues of reconciliation and development in South Africa; it is difficult to analyze one without considering its relationship to the other.

The Program is overseen by Academic Director John Daniel. Daniel is a South African citizen and holds a B.A. (1964) in political science from the University of Natal, South Africa and an M.A. and Ph.D. (1975) in political science from the State University of New York at Buffalo. The program includes four other staff members and eleven guest lecturers from the University of KwaZulu Natal.
SIT's coursework includes "Social and Political Transformation Seminar," "Field Study Seminar," "Independent Study Project," and "Introductory Language Study: Zulu."

1. "Social and Political Transformation Seminar":
-Resources utilized include PEACE Foundation, Phoenix Zululand, and The Valley Trust.
- Module 1: South Africa: The State of the Nation
Lectures and activities will take place at four sites in South Africa - Johannesburg, the Pretoria, Durban, and the KwaZulu Natal South Coast.
-Module 2: Development in South Africa
The module takes place in both a rural and an urban setting. We will begin the module with some conceptual and theoretical underpinnings of development in Durban, and then we will move on to
Amacambini, a rural community just north of the Tugela River in KwaZulu Natal. Here we will live in
homestays and visit a number of development projects within the community. In Amacambini, we will
work in partnership with the P.E.A.C.E. Foundation, a local non-governmental organization.

-Module 3: The Challenges of Reconciliation in South Africa
This module will be taught in Durban and on excursion in the Western Cape.

Module 4: Putting Theory into Practice: Chatsworth and Wentworth
Students will spend some time exploring the history and current
challenges facing South Africans of Indian origin. We will also spend some time living in homestays in
the “Coloured” community of Wentworth, where we will work with organizations involved in community
development.

-Module 5: Focused Study: Development, Gender, and Reconciliation.
Students will be asked to select one area of specialization and focus (mine will be reconciliation) based upon interest and possibly on plans for ISP field study.

2. "Field Study Seminar"
A course in the concepts of learning across cultures and from field experience. Introduction to the Independent Study Project. Material includes cross-cultural adaptation and skills building; project selection and refinement; appropriate methodologies; field study ethics and the World Learning/SIT Human Subjects Review Policy; developing contacts and finding resources; developing skills in observation and interviewing; gathering, organizing, and communicating data; maintaining a field journal.

3. "Independent Study Project"
Conducted in Durban or in another approved location appropriate to the project. Students may choose to complete either an Independent Study Project or a practicum paper resulting from an internship with an affiliate organization working in social and/or political transformation. Students will meet with an Academic Director and Advisor, and have actual hands-on work with their organization.

4. “Introductory Language Study: Zulu."
A significant highlight of the program is Zulu language instruction, complemented by discussions of Zulu history and culture. This two credit (30 hours) course is immersive - students will stay with a Zulu host families, gaining cultural insight and understanding alongside beginning speaking comprehension skills and development of conversational abilities in Zulu. A Language Coordinator will lead the language course, working with a team of language instructors and tutors. Classes will be held primarily in the SIT program center in Durban. The major course objectives include enhancing student interaction with Zulu society and to build a foundation upon which further studies in Zulu can be undertaken, mine of which include community arts projects (possibly murals) with Zulu and other African refugee populations in Baltimore. Students will be assigned exercises and tests (both written and oral) by the instructor, and will be expected to complete a final exam (oral and written).