Associate Professor of Anthropology Carla Daughtry has been awarded a Fulbright Senior Scholar Award, which will allow her to spend the 2010-2011 school year in Cairo, Egypt. She was one of only 14 people selected for a Fulbright award in Egypt. These awards select from a wide pool of candidates, coming from 120 countries.
Daughtry earned her bachelor’s degree at Mount Holyoke College and majored in international relations. She went on to earn a master’s degree in Middle East and North African studies, another master’s degree in cultural anthropology and a doctorate in cultural anthropology at the University of Michigan.
Daughtry’s academic focuses include migration, refugees and issues of globalization. At the Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Alsaud Center for American Studies and Research at American University in Cairo, she will teach classes on race and ethnicity in the United States as well as American perspectives on immigration.
Daughtry also hopes to host an American Hollywood film series to foster discussion about American perspectives along with cross-cultural identity forums.
Claimed Daughtry, “Lawrence is a great place to experience the world.” She hopes to help foster the same sort of open discussion she sees at Lawrence while she is abroad and wants to concentrate on “stressing cross-cultural…identities in a more international setting.”
Daughtry also earned a Fulbright Fellowship in 1992, which she used to go to Egypt and study at Cairo’s Center for Arabic Studies Abroad. She returned to Cairo in 1998 and remained there until 2000, working with Sudanese refugees for her doctoral dissertation.
Daughtry believes the year abroad will not only help improve international relations, but will also help her own understanding of Egypt’s culture, which she will be able to bring to her teaching at Lawrence.
“It will enhance how I teach the Middle East and Egypt to Lawrentians,” she affirmed. “As an anthropologist, it is important to teach students to negotiate diversity.”
While Daughtry acknowledges that fostering acceptance of diversity will not end global conflict, she believes it will at least help mitigate it, which is particularly important given the issues facing the United States and the world today.
Daughtry maintained, “Any effort to enhance cross-cultural understanding will make us happier and safer. It will be rewarding.
Professor Daughtry receives Fulbright Senior Scholar Award
