Three University faculty members were recently awarded Fulbright Scholar grants for their academic merit and leadership potential. Associate Professor of East Asian Studies and Philosophy Stephen Angle, Professor of Theater Ronald Jenkins, and Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures Jeff Rider will join about 800 other U.S. professionals traveling and studying abroad with Fulbright grants.

Sponsored by the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA), U.S. Department of State, the Fulbright Program is designed to “increase mutual understanding between the people of the United States and the people of other countries,” according to its mission statement. Since its inception in 1946, the program has provided approximately 267,500 participants with the opportunity to observe other countries’ political, economic, educational, and cultural institutions. Additionally, it aims to promote an exchange of ideas between international participants and to support ventures that improve the general welfare of the world’s inhabitants. Graduate students, scholars, professionals, teachers, and administrators from the U.S. and other countries are eligible to apply for a grant.

Angle will use his grant to continue his studies at Peking University in Beijing, China. He is continuing research for his forthcoming book, “Sagehood: The Contemporary Ethical Significance of Neo-Confucianism.” As vice president of the International Society for Comparative Studies of Chinese and Western Philosophy, Angle is pushing for more dialogue between Chinese and Western philosophy.

Angle said that he has two main goals for his time in Beijing. First, he will complete “Sagehood,” a book that began as a seminar at Wesleyan and is now three years in the making.

“My second goal,” Angle said, “is to be involved in the academic, intellectual life over here: to give lectures and attend conferences, publish essays in Chinese, and generally get to know folks over here, and their philosophical interests, better.”

Jenkins will travel to Bali, Indonesia in January. Researching at Bali’s College of the Performing Arts, Jenkins will concentrate his studies on messages of tolerance in Balinese temple festival performances.

“Bali is the only Hindu island in Indonesia,” Jenkins said. “The relationships between Muslims and Hindus reflected in the performances can provide useful insights to other nations struggling with solutions for peaceful democratic co-existence between Muslims and non-Muslims.”

Jenkins will transcribe and translate performances that describe world events such as terrorism and globalization from the point of view of Balinese villagers. He feels that it is imperative that American scholars and the general public give greater attention to Indonesia as the fourth-most populous nation in the world and as the most populous Muslim nation.

“I will be spending most of my time in remote villages, documenting improvised performances that take place as part of Hindu temple ceremonies in Bali,” he said. “These performances are rarely translated because they are improvised in multiple languages, including a variant of Sanskrit.”

Rider will use his Fulbright grant at the Université Charles de Gaulle-Lille III, in Lille, France. There, Rider will pursue a translation of Galbert of Bruges’ “Journal.” He has already spent two months in France this fall, but will return in the spring from March through June.

“The first two months this fall were tremendously productive,” Rider said. “The grant has…provided me with a wonderful opportunity to interact with colleagues throughout Europe.”

Rider was invited to give lectures at the University of Strasbourg in France and at the Alexandru Ioan Cuza University of Iasi, Romania. He has also been invited to give lectures in the spring at the Universities of Liverpool and Leeds in the UK and at the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium, as well as at the Université de Lille and the Collège de France.

The Fulbright Program has approximately 267,500 fellowships, 100,900 from the U.S. and 166,600 from abroad. It awards approximately 6,000 new grants annually.