NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Vanderbilt University Professor Don H. Doyle has been selected as the inaugural Fulbright chair in American history, a post established by the Brazil Fulbright Commission.
Doyle, Nelson Tyrone Jr. Professor of History at Vanderbilt, will teach at the host university of Pontifícia Universidade Católica in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board, sponsored by the Commission of Educational Exchange between the United States and Brazil, appointed Doyle, who has held two Fulbright professorships.
While in Brazil, Doyle will teach a seminar for post-graduate students titled “Nationalism in the Americas” with PUC-Rio Professor of History Marco Pamplona during the spring 2004 semester. Students will learn the “theoretical works on nationalism and test those ideas against examples from the history of North America and Latin America,” said Doyle.
“Brazil, the United States, Cuba, Mexico and Canada are all vastly different in many ways,” he said. “But they share a common historical problem of nation building that was a distinctive feature of all the new nations emerging in the American hemisphere — how to build a nation out of a multi-ethnic population of immigrants, few of whom share a common past.”
"This is a great honor for Professor Doyle and a wonderful opportunity for the Department of History,” said Richard McCarty, dean of the College of Arts and Science. “His Fulbright fellowship continues a long tradition of scholarly engagement between Vanderbilt and Brazilian universities."
In 1991, Doyle was a Fulbright senior lecturer in American Studies in Rome, Italy, and a Fulbright senior lecturer in American History in Genoa, Italy, in 1995. He also taught one year in England while serving as director of the Vanderbilt in England program.
“Teaching abroad as a Fulbright professor has transformed the way I understand and teach American history,” he said.
Doyle’s career at Vanderbilt began in 1974 as an assistant professor. He was named a full professor in 1986 and was honored with the title Nelson Tyrone Jr. Professor of History in 2000.
He has written or co-authored a number of books, including most recently Nations Divided: America, Italy, and the Southern Question and Faulkner’s County: The Historical Roots of Yoknapatawpha. Doyle is currently collaborating with Pamplona on the creation of a book of essays called Nationalism in the New World: the Americas and the Atlantic World, as well as planning a conference on the same topic at Vanderbilt in October. During his research leave next year he will also begin work on an interpretive study of American nationalism.