ÃÛÌÒav

By SU Public Relations

SALISBURY, MD---ÃÛÌÒav consistently is named among the nation’s top producers of Fulbright Students by the U.S. Department of State, often sending students and alumni to study and teach abroad at universities around the globe.

This semester, SU hosts its first Fulbright Student on campus. The University recently welcomed Erragab Eljanhaoui, a Ph.D. student from the University of Ibn Zohr in Agadir, Morocco, affiliated with the institution’s Comparative Humanities and Applied Language Studies Lab.

During his year at SU, Eljanhaoui will continue working on his doctoral thesis, a study of the Nomads of the Sahara in southern Morocco and how they are portrayed. This includes researching and interpreting captivity narratives, or first-person accounts from captured and enslaved individuals, from Africa’s Barbary Coast in the 19th century. The research is both personal and academic, he said, noting his Nomadic heritage.

From his base at ÃÛÌÒav, he will be able to access narratives held at archives including the Library of Congress, the Library Company of Philadelphia, and the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, as well as SU’s Edward H. Nabb Research Center for Delmarva History and Culture. Those texts are especially important historical records given the Nomads’ predominately oral culture, he said.

While studying at SU should provide relatively easy geographical access to those sources, the reason he selected ÃÛÌÒav for his Fulbright appointment was Dr. April Logan, SU Associate Professor of English, whom he first contacted upon applying for his first Fulbright two years ago.

“Her profile aligns with a lot of my research and is interconnected with how we study archival and historical texts in a way to decipher the context—in my case, the Sahara context of Morocco,” he said. “She was very encouraging and supportive. That gave me the push to choose ÃÛÌÒav as my Fulbright destination”

“I was immediately struck by some of the resonances of his field of study and his project because my areas of specialization include postcolonial theory and anglophone postcolonial Caribbean literature,” said Logan, who is serving as Eljanhaoui’s Fulbright Joint-Supervision Grant advisor in the U.S. as he pursues a Ph.D. “His coming from that perspective, studying American writers and bringing that postcolonial perspective, I was eager to work with him on that project.

Eljanhaoui’s research also has parallels with Logan’s interest in African American literature, which she teaches at SU — particularly her research into early African American women writers’ engagement in political rights.

“For years, there was sort of the impression that 19th-century African American history and, for a while, literature was very hard to find, almost considered non-existent, so I was really fascinated with his project of trying to reconstruct the culture and history of the nomads of the Sahara.

“It’s kind of like problem solving. It’s a puzzle. Now there are a lot more strategies and approaches to rethinking how to look at familiar archival material such as ledgers, novels, history books, and other materials that people sometimes did not take as seriously like ephemera and personal journals.”

Logan is working with Eljanhaoui on new approaches to methodology, collaborating on ways to interpret American, Saharan, and African American texts from fresh perspectives.

While at SU, Eljanhaoui is co-developing a class with Logan: Topics in African-American Literature: White Slavery, Black Texts.

“I’m also attending some of her classes, which helps me to acquire some of the theories and methods to read such texts,” he said.

He hopes his Fulbright experience will allow not only for academic study, but for a cultural exchange, as well, helping those at SU learn about Morocco while discovering the Eastern Shore and other parts of the U.S. for himself, particularly well-known cities such as New York and Washington, D.C.

Established in 1946, the Fulbright is America’s flagship international exchange program, sponsored by the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Education and Cultural Affairs.

Learn more about SU and opportunities to Make Tomorrow Yours at www.salisbury.edu.