Emily M. Peckenham, a recent Bates College graduate from Orland, has received a Fulbright Student award for postgraduate work in Germany.

Peckenham, who graduated in May with a major in American cultural studies and a minor in German, will spend 10 months in Düsseldorf, Germany, assistant-teaching an American-studies class in public school and researching German political street art.

The Fulbright U.S. Student Program award covers her travel costs and provides a monthly stipend from September 2003 to the following June.

The Fulbright "means a lot to me," says Peckenham. "I worked really hard the whole time I was at Bates. This is my justification for all the hard work I've done."

The U.S. government created the Fulbright Program right after World War II to foster international understanding through educational and cultural exchange. One of a variety of Fulbright programs, the U.S. Student Program awards some 1,000 grants each year and operates in more than 140 countries.

Such an award is "an entrance into the academic world," says Gerda Neu-Sokol, a lecturer in German at Bates who led the "Bates in Berlin" study-abroad program that introduced Peckenham to Germany. "It's a prestigious stipend that gets you on your way to a graduate career. It helps you tremendously."

The award enables Peckenham to combine several areas of interest and experience -- her fascination with German culture, her formal study of American culture and experience in the classroom gained through teaching English as a second language in Lewiston's Montello School.

For her Fulbright research, this artist concerned with how art and society intereact will investigate how the political street art in the former West Germany compares with that found in the former east.

Peckenham's sophomore semester in Berlin coincided with the 2000 U.S. presidential campaign. At the time she was struck by the political sophistication and outspokenness of the Germans, even young people.

"Politically America is very influential to Europeans," she says. "They know more about us than we know about them -- it means more to them because we have more power worldwide, I guess. So I'll be interested to see what conversations I'll get into."

"I'm looking forward to getting into some debates with people -- and just being able to disprove that all Americans are uneducated," Peckenham says.