01/31/17
HAYS, Kan. -- Dr. James Austin, assistant professor of English at Fort Hays State University, was awarded an Emergent Researcher Grant from the Conference on College Composition and Communication.

The $6,959 grant will go towards his book-length project "Intra-nationalism: Conceptualizing New Intersections Between US-Based Higher Education Models and Students in Middle East and North African Nations."

While teaching at the American University in Cairo, Egypt, "I became aware that most students came from a tiny economic and social elite," said Austin. Austin's research interest is in the less than 10 percent of students in Middle East and North African Nations (MENA) who do not belong to the elite classes.

"I became interested in the backgrounds, agendas and experiences of these students and the significance they placed on the writing they were learning at AUC," he said.

In the upcoming three years Austin's research will take him through several Middle East and North African nations, including Egypt.

Austin also recently published an article and a short story.

"Expanding Transnational Frames into Composition Studies: Revising the Rhetoric and Writing Minor at the American University in Cairo" was published in the journal Emerging Writing Research from the Middle East-North Africa Region, published by The WAC Clearinghouse online (https://wac.colostate.edu/books/mena/chapter3.pdf) and the University Press of Colorado in print.

The short story "Little Mister Utah" was published in the Chariton Review.