The film screening & discussion on May 16, at the Fulbright Educational Advising Center, was the second event in our U.S. Heritage Film Club that celebrated the Asian Pacific American Heritage Month. This time around we watched the acclaimed indie film Gook (2017), directed by Justin Chon. The film is set against the first day of the 1992 Rodney King riots in L.A., and explores issues such as racial representation, ethnic tensions, interracial friendship, racial and ethnic struggle. After historically and culturally contextualizing the film, our guest speaker, historian and professor William Henry Issel, Fulbright Scholar (San Francisco State University), shared his own experience growing up within a racially and ethnically diverse community that had to face consequences of political and economic decisions. Professor Issel then invited the participating students to share their thoughts on the film and on the implications of the film’s discourse. The conversation also touched upon the issue, among others, of the generational divide in a context of racial conflict, but it nonetheless ended on a note of hope, drawing upon one of the film’s messages.

Professor Esther Thyssen, currently a Fulbright Scholar at the American Studies Department at the University of Bucharest, recently went to Timișoara to give a talk at the University of the West. The talk was attended by faculty in American Studies as well as masters students in American Studies. The title of the talk was "Fake or Truthful: Circumstances in Social Practice Art since the 1990s."

On April 26, 2018, Fulbright ETA Courtney-Sophia Henry spoke to American Studies Masters students at "Alexandru Ioana Cuza" University in Iași. The talk was for a joint class between Literature and Religion: Early Christianity in Early American Literature and Its Legacy, and American Linguistics. Audience members learned about Native American history and religion, and how it contrasts with other theologies. Ms. Henry, who is from the Saginaw Chippewa Indian Tribe (Ojibwe), shared information on some of the traditional teachings and spirituality of her tribe, as well as the historical background of these practices in the United States.

Professor Thomas J. Cousineau, Fulbright Scholar at the University of Bucharest in 2014-2015, recently visited Romania and made a presentation on "The Manole Complex: Staging Movement in WAITING FOR GODOT" at the "Temporalities of Modernism" Conference hosted by the English Department at Babeș-Bolyai University. A few days later, Professor Cousineau conferenced at the National Museum of Romanian Literature in Bucharest.