UNH student, Kristina Reardon, Receives Prestigious Fulbright Scholarship

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Kristina Reardon

DURHAM, NH (05/18/2010)(readMedia)-- Kristina Reardon, of Uxbridge, Mass. is one of four students at the University of New Hampshire to receive the prestigious Fulbright Scholarship that will provide support to conduct research abroad during the 2010-2011 academic year.

Each year, the Fulbright U.S. Student Program awards grants to exceptional American students for study in more than 140 countries.

Reardon will conduct research in Ljubljana, Slovenia. Her project is titled "Two Decades Later: Translating Women's Fiction Since Slovenian Independence." She will spend the year working with Nike Pokorn at the University of Ljubljana translating a volume of short fiction written by women since Slovenia declared independence in the early 1990s. Through the process of translation, her goal will be able to identify and analyze the way Slovenian nationalism has created a unique literary identity for contemporary women writers in Slovenia over the past two decades.

"While the Slovenian language is spoken by only two million people worldwide," says Reardon, "within the country, the language is a source of pride and provides a sense of unity. Perhaps more than political opinions, the Slovenian language is credited as being the cultural glue that kept Slovenians together as the nation broke away from the former Republic of Yugoslavia. Therefore, Slovenian fiction writers are charged with two important tasks: to preserve the language and to use their narratives to keep stories and histories of Slovenian culture alive."

The few anthologies of Slovenian literature that do exist in English largely contain the work of male writers. "The Veiled Landscape," a published volume of women's fiction and poetry that was translated into English, had a small print run, is not widely available in English-speaking countries, and was published in 1995, only a few years after independence. Therefore, Reardon's project will fill a void in scholarship.

Reardon will graduate from UNH in 2011 with a master's degree in fiction writing. While an undergraduate student at Providence College, Reardon won English department prizes for her prose poetry and fiction writing, as well as awards for essay writing and excellence in English literature. She is published in The Newport Review, the Encyclopedia of Contemporary Fiction, Rhode Island Monthly, and the Stonebridge Press.

The University of New Hampshire, founded in 1866, is a world-class public research university with the feel of a New England liberal arts college. A land, sea, and space-grant university, UNH is the state's flagship public institution, enrolling more than 12,200 undergraduate and 2,200 graduate students.