MSU English professor completes Fulbright Scholarship

As a German-born U.S. citizen and current co-director of the Berlin Program for the Kentucky Institute for International Studies, Dr. Sylvia Henneberg is no stranger to international travel. In fact, the MSU professor of English was recently asked to travel overseas again, only this time through her selection to the illustrious Core Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program.

The program had Henneberg venturing to the University of Vienna in Vienna, Austria, from February to July of this year. While she was there, she focused on teaching the country’s college students in the hopes of comparing the post-secondary educational systems of Western Europe and the United States. 

Henneberg said she was also a Fulbright Scholar back in the 2009-10 academic year. She said her focus both then and during her most recent trip were very similar.

“A large part of my proposal, both this time and last time, was how I was going to make an impact in a foreign classroom and how I was going to make an impact in a Morehead classroom upon my return,” she said.
In addition to her teaching duties, Henneberg also conducted a research project entitled “The Feminization of First-World Problems: Models of Resistance in the Poetry of Gwendolyn Brooks and Lucille Clifton,” where she focused on each poet’s respective work and how it combats notions of body and parenting perfection among women in first-world countries.

The Fulbright Scholar Program is administered by the Council for International Exchange of Scholars (CIES), the nonprofit scholar division of the Institute of International Education (IIE). It is the U.S. flagship academic exchange in collaboration with the Department of State, Bureau of Educational and Economic Affairs (ECA).

For more information on MSU’s Department of English, call 606-783-9448 or visit www.moreheadstate.edu/english. To learn more about MSU Education Abroad, call 606-783-5289 or go to www.moreheadstate.edu/educationabroad.