Bethany Reynolds, of Timonium, Md., Awarded Fulbright Grant to China

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Bethany Reynolds

LEXINGTON, VA (05/24/2013)(readMedia)-- Bethany Reynolds, of Timonium, Md., a 2013 graduate of Washington and Lee University, has received a Fulbright research/study grant to China for her project "Acquiring an Education for Migrant Children in Zhejiang Province."

The idea behind Reynolds' Fulbright is two-fold. She will focus on the education of migrant workers' children, "I also hope to conduct exploratory research on immigrant identity," she said.

"If I can find Spanish-speaking immigrants in my province, I hope to do fieldwork with them, tracking trends in transnationalism and the shifting paradigms of deterritorialization as it relates to the development of one's cultural identity, all novel fields in cultural anthropology," she said. "I have always [wanted] to connect my interests in the Spanish-speaking world and Mandarin-speaking world, so studying the immigrant population in China will enable me to finally bridge those interests."

Reynolds studied abroad while at W&L through Middlebury University's language-immersion program in Hangzhou, China, where she conducted research on migrant workers and their children, alongside sociology Professor Wang Ping of Zhejiang University of Technology. She realized that she could dive even deeper into the issue with her Fulbright by visiting local schools and villages and districts of the city heavily populated by migrants, including Hangzhou, Ningbo, Wenzhou and Jinhua.

Reynolds was an East Asian languages and literature major at W&L with a concentration in Chinese. She was a member of Phi Eta Sigma Freshman National Honor Society, Omicron Delta Kappa, the W&L Singers and the Dean's List. She worked for W&L's Tucker Multimedia Center in the language/humanities lab and is an advanced pianist.

Sponsored by the U.S. State Department's Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, the Fulbright Program is the U.S. government's flagship international exchange program.