Title VIII Scholarship Recipient Profile: Harrison King
Harrison King reflects on his experience participating in the virtual Eurasian Regional Language Program (ERLP) for four consecutive semesters and how he has committed himself to learning Georgian.
My first encounter with Georgia and the Georgian language occurred in 2012, when I visited Tbilisi as a Fulbright English Teaching Assistant based in neighboring Azerbaijan. I immediately fell in love with the city’s vibrant culture and multilayered history. To me, Tbilisi felt like a microcosm of the entire South Caucasus. I found the Georgian language inscrutable but fascinating, and I even picked up a copy of Dodona Kiziria’s Beginner’s Georgian textbook in a half-hearted attempt to learn the basics. I soon gave up, but that initial encounter planted in me the desire to try again one day. After that first trip in 2012, I returned to Georgia several times to explore other regions and to conduct research for my master’s thesis on the origins of the Nagorny Karabakh conflict and the disintegration of Soviet rule in the South Caucasus. Most recently, when I was back in Tbilisi for preliminary dissertation research in Summer 2018, I vowed that I would not return to Georgia without committing to learning the language. Hence my decision to enroll in ERLP!
The ERLP Georgian curriculum was well-designed and geared towards acquiring proficiency at an accelerated pace. Depending on the semester (part-time versus full-time), I had between 7-12 hours of regular instruction per week on Zoom. The program struck a nice balance between moving through the course material systematically and pushing us out of our comfort zones through daily language immersion. Exams and other written and oral assessments were rigorous and aimed at helping us consolidate our knowledge of Georgian. My lessons featured textbook exercises, analyses of short texts about Georgian history and culture, verb-focused sessions, and informal conversation hours with native speakers. While I began my study of Georgian in Summer 2020 with several fellow beginners, I switched to intensive, one-on-one tutoring in Fall 2020 and Spring 2021, which allowed me to develop my reading, writing, speaking, and listening skills rapidly. This tailored approach also gave me ample opportunities to delve deeper into difficult aspects of Georgian grammar and verb conjugations with my instructors in Tbilisi, who were incredibly patient and helpful as I struggled to make sense of the Georgian language’s many complexities.
The online ERLP Georgian program organized virtual cultural activities for our group nearly every week. These guest lectures covered topics ranging from Georgian dancing and cinema, Georgia’s regional diversity and minorities, local politics during the Stalinist era, and challenges related to Covid-19 in Georgia. Most sessions were conducted in English, but on several occasions we switched to Georgian in order to put our newly acquired language skills to the test. Presenting in front of an audience of native speakers of Georgian was by far the most nerve-wracking and rewarding experience on ERLP. My first public presentation in Fall 2020 was about the Tbilisi-born Armenian director Sergei Parajanov’s iconic films. While the assignment felt slightly above my skill level, I enjoyed the challenge and was glad that I managed to string together enough coherent sentences to deliver a short presentation as an intermediate-level student. One of the most memorable activities was a historical skit we performed on Zoom/Facebook on Georgian Language Day (April 14th)--the anniversary of Eduard Shevardnadze’s decision to retain Georgian as the official language of the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic in 1978.
Meanwhile, the main difficulty I experienced on ERLP was staying motivated and retaining new information while struggling with “Zoom fatigue” during a pandemic. Staring at a screen day after day for multiple months was more mentally taxing than I expected. While I am a veteran language learner, I have never learned a language exclusively online (and without real-world practice), so the virtual format has been quite the challenge despite the fact that my teachers have done a wonderful job adapting to online instruction.
For “homework,” I tried my hand at preparing some well-known Georgian dishes, including chakhokhbili (chicken stew with tomatoes), badrijani nigvzit (eggplant rolls with garlic-walnut paste), and bazhe (grilled chicken in walnut sauce). I enjoy watching Georgian films (Soviet-era and contemporary) and reading Georgian literature and historical scholarship about Georgia during the Tsarist and Soviet eras. Given prolonged Covid-19 complications and travel restrictions, I have not been able to test my language skills “on the ground” yet. But I look forward to moving to Tbilisi this fall, where I hope to apply everything that I have learned over the past three semesters as I navigate the challenges of living and working in Georgia.
This fall, I plan to spend several months in Georgia conducting archival research for my dissertation project in Tbilisi and Batumi. My familiarity with Georgian culture and advanced proficiency in Georgian will be indispensable for this first phase of my overseas research focused on the Russian-Ottoman borderlands and Soviet-Turkish border from 1878 through the Cold War. I plan to analyze primary source documents in Georgian and conduct oral history interviews with residents living on the Georgian-Turkish border for my project. As for long-term career goals, I envision working as a history professor of Russian and Eurasian history at an American or European university, or, alternatively, working as an analyst focused on the contemporary post-Soviet space/Eastern Europe for a non-academic research center or serving in the U.S. Foreign Service. In any of these capacities, I hope to utilize my knowledge of Georgian history, culture, and language to generate historically informed analyses of the South Caucasus and the wider region.
A few words of advice: (1) stay strong--don’t let Zoom fatigue dampen your desire to learn a new language or knock your confidence; (2) study and review your notes more often than you normally would because learning a language online requires at least twice as much energy; and (3) treat yourself to “extracurriculars” (e.g., reading novels, watching films, cooking special dishes, etc. related to your host country/language) to recreate relaxing experiences that you would normally have in-country.
About Title VIII Fellowships for Overseas Language Study:
The U.S. Department of State, Program for Research and Training on Eastern Europe and the Independent States of the Former Soviet Union (Title VIII), provides fellowship support to graduate students in policy-relevant fields who wish to participate in the American Councils Advanced Russian Language and Area Studies Program (RLASP), the Balkan Language Initiative (BLI), or the Eurasian Regional Language Program (ERLP). More information about Title VIII Fellowships for Overseas Language Study can be found here.
By: Harrison King
Program: Eurasian Regional Language Program
Term: Summer 2020, Fall 2020, Spring 2021, Summer 2021