Information Session and Alumni Speaker Panel: Hispanic Serving Institutions

This information session provides prospective U.S. applicants with an in-depth look at the Fulbright Specialist Program and the opportunity to hear from a panel of Fulbright Specialist alumni based at Hispanic Serving Institutions.

Alumni panelists:

Christopher M. Bellitto is Professor of History at Kean University in New Jersey, where he teaches courses in ancient and medieval history. A specialist in medieval and church history, his latest book is Humility: The Secret History of a Lost Virtue (Georgetown University Press, 2023). He has twice won grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities. He has been Visiting Scholar at Princeton Theological Seminary and a Fulbright Specialist in New Zealand and the Netherlands. Dr. Bellitto also serves as series Editor in Chief of Brill’s Companions to the Christian Tradition and Academic Editor at Large for Paulist Press. He offers public lectures frequently and is also a media commentator on church history and contemporary Catholicism.

Santiago Vaquera-Vásquez: unrepentant border crosser, ex-dj, and Xicano writer. Professor of Creative Writing and Hispanic Southwest Literatures and Cultures in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of New Mexico, he has also taught and lectured at universities across the United States, Latin America, and Europe. He has held Fulbright Fellowships in Spain, and Turkey, and served as a Fulbright Specialist in Poland. His books include, Luego el silencio (2014), One Day I’ll Tell You the Things I’ve Seen (2015), En el Lost ‘n Found (2016), Yabancı [Foreigner] Extranjero (2019) and Nocturno de frontera (2020). Commenting on his writing, Junot Díaz has said “Santiago Vaquera is literary lightning. He impresses, he illuminates, and when he is at his best you are left shaken, in awe.”