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Jennifer Cash, like IU's other Chancellor's Fellows (See story this issue), is among the best of the best--a promising graduate student for whom the doors to various prestigious academic programs were wide open. While she doesn't pretend that the generous fellowship made no difference in her choice to attend IU, Cash found exactly what she was looking for here.
| When Jennifer Cash went shopping for a graduate program, she needed financial assistance and an academic path that seemed clear and full of possibilities. At IUB, she found both. |
"I went to the University of Chicago, not because it was a 'good school,' but because I was entranced by the idea of going to a school that advertised itself as a community of scholars and learning," she said.
"The classes in anthropology felt like communities of learning. Students were valued. We were not penalized for stumbling around ideas or garbling thoughts, but encouraged to ask questions and rewarded for suggesting new ways to answer old ones."
Cash, who is mentored at IU by Anya Royce, professor of anthropology, wanted the same intellectual challenge and nurturing in a graduate school. But she also needed help financially.
"I saw graduate school as a 'first job' in a long-term career," Cash said. "I paid my way through undergraduate school with financial aid, loans and jobs, and I wanted to devote myself entirely to school without accruing more debt. If I hadn't gotten funding, I seriously doubt that I would have attended graduate school, or I would have at least worked on another career for several years before applying again."
Cash applied to IU, Michigan, the City University of New York and Johns Hopkins. The first three offered help.
"The hardest decision was between Michigan and Indiana," Cash said. "In many ways, Michigan was the ideal program for me. But Michigan was over-shaping my program, choosing my sub-disciplines, languages, specific geographic area of study to fill in the gaps left by other students' research interests. At IU, I got a very different feeling.
"At IU, the department emphasizes the four-field approach--socio cultural, linguistic, biological anthropology, and archaeology--and requires students to take courses in at least three of the four," said Cash. "I thought the required outside minor was a good idea, and I also was excited about the prominence of teacher training for graduate students. I felt that this program was geared towards preparing students for their future careers, rather than towards harnessing student energy for the benefit of the department or the university itself."
Cash is interested in the ethnic identities formed at the "fringes" of other identities and is especially drawn to Gypsies and their role of being "European" and yet "not European." She chose the multi-ethnic Moldova, an area attached to both Romania and Russia at different points in the past, as the geographical field site for her studies.
"I knew Romanian was one of the many languages taught at IU and was disturbed at its absence from Michigan's list," she said. "I have since found that IU is, in fact, one of only a few schools in the country offering Romanian at all, the only one that regularly offers Romanian above the second-year level, and the only one able to connect students with professors in history, comparative literature, journalism and other departments.
"In talking about why I went to Chicago and then why I chose to major in anthropology, I thought it important to emphasize the existence of a 'community' for me," Cash explained. "It is something I strive to be a part of.
"I came to IU because this anthropology department is a community that strives to recognize the humanity of its members. I'm glad that Anya Royce is my mentor, because she will not let me forget that to be an anthropologist is to work for the recognition of humanity, and in the service of communities."
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