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| January 2005
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CAMPUS NEWS |
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| SOC Professor Honored with Fulbright Award
Maher joined the AU faculty as assistant professor of film and media arts last fall from Chicago’s Columbia College, where she was an artist-in-residence for three years. She holds a BA from Colorado College and an MFA from Northwestern University. She became involved in film and video “in order to promote awareness and social change…I explore in my own personal works how I can construct documentaries to promote audience members to question their own preconceived notion of identity and culture.” Maher has directed film and theatre productions around the world, including the U.S., the West Bank, and Oman. She first became involved in the Middle East when she visited her brother there when she was 17. “All I had learned about the Middle East, suddenly became turned on its head and, at that moment, I realized how the media has been misused in stereotyping a beautiful people,” she recalls.
Maher says the Fulbright scholarship has been a personal goal and dream for more than eight years. "In my experiences of directing theatre and film productions, I wanted an opportunity to collaborate with university students, and now I look forward to the possibilities.” Established in 1946 under legislation introduced by the late Arkansas Senator J. William Fulbright, the Fulbright program’s purpose is to build mutual understanding between the people of the United States and other countries. Maher is one of the approximately 800 U.S. faculty and professionals who will travel abroad to any of nearly 140 countries during the 2004-2005 academic year through the program, which is sponsored by the Department of State and Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs. More than 250,000 American and foreign university students, K-12 teachers, and university faculty and professionals have participated in one of the several Fulbright exchange programs. Recipients of Fulbright scholar awards are selected on the basis of academic or professional achievement and because they have demonstrated extraordinary leadership potential in their field. Past recipients include Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman; Alan Leshner, CEO of the American Association for the Advancement of Science; and CEO of Intel Corporation Craig Barrett. -Ashley
Ferrell ‘07
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School
of Communication Professor Brigid Maher added a new feather to her cap
this month when she received a prestigious Fulbright Scholar award on
January 11. This spring, Maher will travel to Lebanon to teach broadcast
media and a cross-cultural symposium at Notre Dame University.
Recently,
she completed a documentary about the underground artist King VelVeeda
and his legal fight against Kraft Food Holdings. She also wrote, directed,
and produced the feature film