Academics

Graduate student Alexander Fyfe receives International Research Award

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Alexander Fyfe, a doctoral student in comparative literature with a dual title in African studies, received the Graduate Student International Research Award. The purpose of the award is to promote and support international research and scholarship by graduate students that has potential for global impact.

In Fyfe's dissertation, titled “Forms of Resilience: African Fiction and Capitalism’s Terminal Crisis,” he aims to provide a new vocabulary for discussing the alternative politics of African literary forms in the era of crisis, one that established frameworks of literary resistance have not generally been able to capture. Fyfe’s dissertation argues that “the global crisis of capitalism has been a major influence upon post-1980s African literary production.”

Fyfe will travel to Kenya this summer to conduct interviews with a non-governmental organization that uses outreach activities to create community systems and platforms that support the ongoing initiatives of change. These outreach activities are implemented through the theatre genre of magnet theatre, participatory peer-led discussions, visual art and sporting events.

Fyfe was honored during the annual Graduate Student Awards Luncheon held on April 25 at the Nittany Lion Inn.

Last Updated April 27, 2018