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AU Professor latest to receive Fulbright U.S. Scholars Award
Associate Professor of History Dr. Lynneth Miller Renberg will study in Norway this academic year after receiving a Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program award in history from the U.S. Department of State and the Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board.
Dr. Renberg, who is on the faculty of the College of Arts and Sciences, will be working as a researcher at the University of Tromsø, partnering with one of their research centers, Creating the New North, and working with other academic departments and faculties on campus as she works on her book project.
“The book I am working on is using methods from dance studies from history and theology to help us learn more about the construction of community, identity and belief and medieval Finnish Scandia,” Dr. Renberg said. “We’ll be looking at encounters between the Sámi, the indigenous people who live in the far north of Europe, and medieval European travelers.”
Dr. Renberg noted that a challenge in studying relations between these two groups is that the Sámi left few written texts.
“There is a significant language barrier, and in a lot of the texts that European travelers left, they didn’t record anything from the Sámi and in the Sámi‘s own words or perspective, but they described a lot of things, like dances and processions and songs,” Dr. Renberg said. “I’ll be using methods from dance studies to analyze these texts as well as to analyze material culture like drums and artifacts from Sámi culture and working with Sámi scholars—both people who study Sámi and individuals who are Sámi to understand in these first encounters what Europeans thought about the Sámi, what they believed, how did the Sámi understand Europeans and what Europeans believed, and how can reading history more expansively using performance as a way to understand what happened in the past help us better understand these past encounters when we don’t have written sources.”
Fulbright U.S. Scholars are faculty, researchers, administrators and established professionals teaching or conducting research in affiliation with institutes abroad. Fulbright Scholars engage in cutting-edge research and expand their professional networks, often continuing research collaborations started abroad and laying the groundwork for forging future partnerships between institutions. Upon returning to their home countries, institutions, labs and classrooms, they share their stories and often become active supporters of international exchange, inviting foreign scholars to campus and encouraging colleagues and students to go abroad.
Since 1946, the Fulbright Program has provided more than 400,000 talented and accomplished students, scholars, teachers, artists and professionals with the opportunity to study, teach and conduct research abroad. Fulbrighters exchange ideas, build people-to-people connections and work to address complex global challenges.
Notable Fulbright recipients include 62 Nobel Laureates, 93 Pulitzer Prize winners, 82 MacArthur Fellows, 44 heads of state or government and thousands of leaders across the private, public and nonprofit sectors. More than 800 individuals teach or conduct research abroad through the Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program annually. In addition, more than 2,000 Fulbright U.S. Student Program participants— recent college graduates, graduate students, and early career professionals—participate in study/research exchanges or as English teaching assistants in local schools abroad each year.
Fulbright is a program of the U.S. Department of State, with funding provided by the U.S. Government. Participating governments and host institutions, corporations and foundations around the world also provide direct and indirect support to the program, which operates in more than 160 countries worldwide. In the United States, the Institute of International Education implements the Fulbright U.S. Student and U.S. Scholar Programs on behalf of the U.S. Department of State.
This is the third consecutive year an Anderson University professor has received a Fulbright U.S. Scholar Award. Dr. Renberg joins Dr. Kolawole Olaiya (associate professor of English) and Dr. Anthony Caito (associate professor of leadership and organizations.) as a Fulbright honoree
The Last Mile With
Lynneth Miller Renberg
Associate Professor of History
Recording Officer, Society for Information Research Anderson University College of Arts and Sciences Department of History and Political Science
When I think of who on campus exemplifies Great Academics, so many people come to mind.
Chuck Fuller, Lindsay Privette, Katherine Wyma, Candace Livingston and, of course, my husband, Adam Renberg. It’s a gift to work somewhere with so many scholars who think deeply, widely and well about their own fields and about how their knowledge as academics shapes their actions and beliefs as Christians.
The earliest thing I remember wanting to be is a large mammal marine biologist.
I was fascinated by dolphins and whales as a child and wanted to study them. That career aspiration was abandoned when I realized I got very seasick, and also didn’t enjoy biology!
I have much better work/rest boundaries than I did as a student (and drink much less coffee!)
I also have become better at not putting my worth or value in my work, but instead simply doing my best and trusting that the Lord will use it.
A moment of shared excitement is…
seeing students realize why the long primary source they’ve been wrestling with in Honors is so significant for understanding how we see the world today, or the shared gasp when, in a history class, the pieces of the story come together. It is what makes me excited about research and learning, and getting to share that excitement with a class is a sort of magic.
It’s too hard to say what my favorite book is.
I’m currently reading Stolen, by Ann-Helén Lestadius. My favorite fiction books are the Anne of Green Gables series, Dorothy Sayers’ Lord Peter Wimsey series (especially Gaudy Night) and C.S. Lewis’s Til We Have Faces. A few favorite history books include Eamon Duffy’s Stripping of the Altars, Caroline Walker Bynum’s Christian Materiality and Miri Rubin’s Corpus Christi: The Eucharist in Late Medieval Culture. I also love Tish Harrison Warren’s Liturgy of the Ordinary. There are too many books to count on my “to be read” list!
I love to travel.
Some favorite places to visit are Norway, the UK, northern France or Hawaii. I’d happily go to any of those places! As for beach or mountains—or city or countryside—it depends on the season. For me, it’s beach and countryside in summer, mountains and city in winter.
Some verses that have been particularly meaningful for me throughout my life are Ephesians 4, Isaiah 54, and Psalm 34.
“If I only had one word to describe Anderson University, it would be “camaraderie.” The people really do make this University, both our students and my colleagues!”
