February 4, 2010: News & Views

Michael Flamm

Photo by Hersey Liu ’09

History Professor Receives Fulbright
Flamm eager to teach U.S. history and foreign policy in Argentinean university

Ohio Wesleyan history professor Michael Flamm will spend next fall teaching at San Andrés University in Argentina as the recipient of a Fulbright Scholarship.

Flamm went to Argentina in August 2006 as a Fulbright senior specialist. He said he enjoyed his experience and hoped to return in the future with his family. This time, his wife and his children Austin (four) and Alexandra (two) will join him. The family will leave for Argentina in July and return before spring semester 2011. The academic term in Argentina is August-November.

Flamm applied for the Fulbright scholarship last summer. He says there are three types of Fulbright scholarships: for research, for teaching and a combination of the two.

Flamm will go to teach U.S. history to students at the university. According to his project proposal, he will teach two courses: one, an elective seminar, will explore American foreign policy since 1898. The other will be a course on American history since 1877—an important class, Flamm writes, because there is no current class at San Andrés that covers that period in American history.

“Both of these courses will, I believe, help fill a large gap in the history curriculum at San Andrés University,” Flamm wrote in his proposal. “More importantly, they will, I hope, eventually contribute to a greater understanding in Argentina of the complicated role the United States has played in global affairs.”

Flamm says he hopes a better knowledge of the United States will help the students understand why the U.S. pursues the policies it does.

“The relationships between the people are good, but if anyone in Argentina has a critical view of the U.S. it’s because of the government,” Flamm says.

In his proposal, Flamm says he found the people of Argentina didn’t have much knowledge of American history, but were interested in how recent history shaped foreign policy.

“When I taught in Buenos Aires in August 2006 as a Fulbright Senior Specialist, I found that there was a fair amount of hostility to U.S. policy, especially in Iraq,” he wrote. “But I also found that there was a great deal of interest in U.S. history and how the forces of the past shaped the events of the present.”

Flamm says he is interested to observe how Argentineans perceive the US government now that Barack Obama is in office.

He also is looking forward to bringing knowledge and new perspectives back to OWU. He says globalizing the curriculum is a “two-way street.”

“We bring the world to classrooms even as we leave classrooms to see the world,” he says.

– Michelle Rotuno-Johnson ’12