History Graduate Student Awarded U.S. Department of Education Fellowship

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Sanket Desai

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – Sanket Desai, a doctoral candidate in the department of history, has been awarded a Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowship by the U.S. Department of Education to study Arabic at the University of Wisconsin's Arabic, Persian and Turkish Language Immersion Institute. 

“Mr. Desai is a devoted teacher for the department, an active member of the university community and a top-flight research scholar,” said Tricia Starks, associate professor and director of graduate studies in the department of history.  “It is great to see one of our fantastic graduate students recognized with an illustrious fellowship like the FLAS award.”

Desai is pursuing a doctorate under the direction of Joel Gordon, professor of history and director of the King Fahd Center for Middle East Studies. In his dissertation, “Emerging from Occupation: Development and the Creation of the Iraqi Nation, 1946-1958,” Desai will explore the relationship between nationalism and subaltern groups in interwar Iraq.

These highly-competitive fellowships provide tuition and fees for both academic year and summer programs where the focus is on less commonly taught modern languages and are supported by the U.S. Department of Education’s Title VI program. The Title VI initiative began in 1958 as part of the National Defense Education Act with the intention of encouraging study of languages, cultures and histories of less commonly investigated regions of the world.  The National Resource Centers funded by Title VI attempt to bring an academic response to global security needs.

Desai earned a Bachelor of Arts from Eastern Michigan University and a Master of Arts from Purdue.