Religious Studies Professor Awarded Fulbright, Will Teach in Romania in Spring 2023

Craig Prentiss, Ph.D., professor of Religious Studies and Theology at Rockhurst, was recently granted a Fulbright Scholar Award to teach at the University of Bucharest in Romania in spring 2023. Fulbright Scholar Awards are prestigious and competitive fellowships that provide unique opportunities for scholars to teach and conduct research abroad. 

Alumni include 61 Nobel Laureates, 89 Pulitzer Prize winners, 76 MacArthur Fellows, and thousands of leaders and world-renowned experts in academia and many other fields across the private, public, and non-profit sectors.

“The grant proposal involves a very detailed description of what you intend to do, why you intend to do it, and what benefit your proposal will have not only for the country you’re applying to teach in, but also for your home institution,” Prentiss said.

Prentiss chose Romania because he was interested in countries that were actively in the process of shaping their identities considering recent history.

“Romania checked all the boxes as a country that remains in the process of transition after decades of Communism and a brutal, totalitarian regime that is now transitioning toward a democratic society,” Prentiss said. “And this transition is taking place in the midst of a larger European context that is also witnessing rising support for authoritarian leadership systems and ethnic nationalism. Religion, of course, has played a major role in these trends and tendencies.”

Prentiss will teach at the University of Bucharest, offering courses on “Religion, Ethnicity, and Race in the Americas” and “Religious Pluralism in the U.S.”

“I’m hoping to convince a lot of Romanian students and faculty that it’s really hard to understand the United States without understanding the role religion has played in the formation of American ideological frameworks," he said. "Sometimes the best way to learn about your own society is to see how things operate in another one. I know that’s been true for me. Ideally, those Romanian students will make connections between how ideas form in the U.S. through a religious lens and how ideas form in Romania through a religious lens, which in the case of Romania has been overwhelmingly through the Romanian Orthodox Church.

"I’m also excited to have to rethink some of the things I teach at Rockhurst through the prism of a very different set of students," Prentiss continued. "I’ve found that in the previous times I’ve had to do this, it’s led to my making real improvements to some of my classes at Rockhurst because I was kind of forced to experiment with new things.”

Upon completion of his time in Romania, Prentiss hopes to help provide new ventures for both Rockhurst students and faculty.  

“I hope I can set up opportunities for Rockhurst students to interact with Romanian students and for Rockhurst faculty to guest lecture in the American Studies program there through Zoom," he said. "And if there’s an audience for it, it would be great if this could lead to some study abroad opportunities and summer programs looking at Eastern European life for Rockhurst students.”