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Two faculty members from  Rutgers University have been awarded Fulbright Scholar grants that will allow them to teach and do research abroad during 2010, one in Iceland, the other in Peru.  Dr. Jyl Josephson  and Dr. Laura Lomas  will join 1,200 U.S. experts traveling abroad this academic year through the Fulbright Scholars program, the flagship academic exchange program of the U.S. government.  The Fulbright grants are administered through the Council for International Exchange of Scholars, a division of the Institute of International Education.

Josephson, an associate professor, political science and women’s and gender studies, will teach the Politics of Sexuality at the Centre for Women’s and Gender Research (RIKK) at the University of Iceland in Reykjavík, the nation’s capital, from  January through May 2011. The course will introduce Icelandic students to gender and public and social policy and politics in the American context, while Josephson will study gender policies and politics in Iceland, a Nordic country known for its progressive views on gender equality. Josephson also will research “how the Icelandic Center has succeeded in linking women’s and gender studies scholarship with public scholarship related to gender equality in Iceland.”

Lomas,  associate professor, English Department, will lecture and do research at one of the oldest universities in the Americas, the Universidad Nacional  Mayor de San Marcos, in Lima, from March through August.  She will teach a course in U.S. literature and a graduate seminar in Latin American literature, while also writing a biography of a Peruvian woman writer who lived in New York in the 1890s, Amalia Puga.   Lomas also will conduct research for her second book.  Drawing upon research in late nineteenth-century periodicals for her first book, Translating Empire: José Martí, Migrant Latino Subjects and America Modernities (Duke 2008), this project focuses on the cultural, political and economic connections among the Americas in the late 19th century, a period that Lomas calls the “transamerican Gilded Age.”  

Both Lomas and Josephson are members of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Rutgers-Newark. Lomas teaches both undergraduate and graduate classes, including courses  in comparative literature, literature of the Americas, and women’s literature, while Josephson has both developed and taught courses in feminist theory and feminist methods; gender and public policy; gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender politics; political theory, public administration, public and social policy, and American politics, also at the graduate and undergraduate levels.

Josephson, a Jersey City, N.J., resident, holds a bachelor of arts degree from Gustavus  Adolphus College, St. Peter, Minnesota;  a master of public administration from the University of Baltimore, Maryland; and a doctoral degree in government and politics from the University of Maryland, College Park.

Lomas, a resident of Newark, N.J., graduated from Swarthmore College, Pennsylvania, with a bachelor of arts degree, and earned her doctoral degree at Columbia University, New York.  She is a native of Bellevue, Washington.

 ABOUT RUTGERS UNIVERSITY, NEWARK 

Rutgers-Newark is home to the Newark College of Arts and Sciences, University College, the Graduate School-Newark, Rutgers Business School-Newark and New Brunswick, the School of Law-Newark, the College of Nursing, the School of Criminal Justice, the School of Public Affairs and Administration, and extensive research and outreach centers, including the Center for Molecular and Behavioral Neuroscience. Approximately 12,000 students are currently enrolled in a wide range of undergraduate and graduate degree programs offered at the 38-acre downtown Newark campus.