Featured Alumni

Emily Mason (1956 Fulbright U.S. Student to Italy) was an abstract painter and printmaker. She was a longtime teacher of art at Hunter College in New York City and exhibited her work throughout the United States.

Sheena Rose (2014 Fulbright  Student from Barbados) is a visual artist whose multi-disciplinary works have been featured in the Havana Biennial, Venice Biennial, and Jamaica Biennial, as well as museums in the United States and around the world. She has designed public art projects including bus shelters in Des Moines, Iowa and a mural at the Inter-American Development Bank in Washington, D.C.

Milton Glaser (1952 Fulbright U.S. Student to Italy) was a celebrated American graphic designer whose designs included the I ♥ NY logo and the logos for DC Comics and Brooklyn Brewery. He was the co-founder of New York Magazine and the first graphic artist to receive the National Medal of the Arts.

Mary Ellen Mark (1965 Fulbright U.S. Student to Turkey) was a photographer whose work documented the women’s liberation movement and opposition to the Vietnam War, as well as diverse cultures around the world. Her photographs appeared in Life, Rolling Stone, The New York Times, and Vanity Fair. She received three Robert F. Kennedy Journalism awards, the World Press Award for Outstanding Body of Work, and three fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Aaron Copland (1950 and 1964 Fulbright U.S. Scholar to Italy, the United Kingdom, Japan, Austria, and Germany) was a preeminent American composer and conductor who was known as the “Dean of American Composers.” His works include Appalachian Spring, Billy the Kid, and Fanfare for the Common Man.  His musical scores for movies and ballet won him an Academy Award and a Pulitzer Prize.

Philip Glass (1964 Fulbright U.S. Student to France) is a prolific American composer and founder of the Philip Glass Ensemble. Regarded as one of the most influential composers of the late 20^th century, he has written critically acclaimed operas and symphonies as well as three Academy Award-nominated film scores, all in his minimalist style.  He was a 2018 Kennedy Center Honoree for his lifetime contributions to American culture through the performing arts.

George Walker (1957 Fulbright U.S. Student to France) was a composer and the first African American to win the Pulitzer Prize for Music for his work Lilacs. He was the recipient of numerous awards including two Guggenheim Fellowships, a Fromm Foundation commission, and an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award.

Julia Wolfe (1991 Fulbright U.S. Student to the Netherlands) is an American composer who won a Pulitzer Prize for Music for her work Anthracite Fields. She has also received the Herb Alpert Award in Music and was a MacArthur Fellow.

Jin Hi Kim (2017 Fulbright U.S. Specialist to Vietnam) is a Korean American composer and performer who introduced the komungo, a Korean zither, in both traditional and electric forms to American contemporary music.  She is a Guggenheim Fellow and has performed as a soloist at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, and the Kennedy Center as well as at international festivals and venues.

Renée Fleming (1984 Fulbright U.S. Student to Germany) is one of the most accomplished American operatic sopranos, a musical stateswoman, and an advocate for the powerful connection between music and health. A four-time Grammy Award winner, she is a Kennedy Center Honoree and the recipient of France’s Chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur, Germany’s Cross of the Order of Merit, and Sweden’s Polar Music Prize, and is a member of England’s Royal Academy of Music.

Katherine Dunham(1986 Fulbright U.S. Scholar to Brazil) was an American dancer, choreographer, and anthropologist who is credited with transforming American dance by bringing African and the Caribbean influences into the American dance world.  She founded and directed the Katherine Dunham Company and introduced the Dunham Technique for teaching dance.

Garth Fagan (1996 Fulbright U.S. Scholar to Australia and New Zealand) is a Jamaican American modern dance choreographer who is the founder and artistic director of Garth Fagan Dance. His choreography has been featured at the Dance Theater of Harlem, the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, and the Limón Dance Company.  He received a Tony Award as well as Drama Desk, Laurence Olivier, Astaire, and Outer Critics Circle Awards for his groundbreaking work in the Broadway Musical The Lion King.

Sylvia Plath (1955 Fulbright U.S. Student to the United Kingdom) was a dynamic and influential poet, novelist, and writer best known for her poetry collections The Colossus and Other Poems, and Ariel, as well as her novel The Bell Jar. She won the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry.

George Seferis (1968 Fulbright Visiting Scholar from Greece) was a poet and statesman who was the first Greek recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature. He had a long and successful diplomatic career, retiring as the Royal Greek Ambassador to the United Kingdom. His resistance to the military government in Greece made him a national hero.

Maya Angelou (1986 Fulbright U.S. Scholar to Liberia) was a poet and civil rights activist who authored autobiographies, essays, poetry, plays, movies, and television shows. She wrote 36 books, including her influential work I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.

John Steinbeck (1963 Fulbright U.S. Specialist to the Soviet Union) was an author of scores of works including East of Eden, Of Mice and Men, and The Grapes of Wrath, which won the Pulitzer Prize. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for his realistic and imaginative writings and keen social perception.

Eudora Welty (1954 Fulbright U.S. Scholar to the United Kingdom) was a short story writer, novelist, and photographer whose novel The Optimist’s Daughter won the Pulitzer Prize in 1973. She is a recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

N. Scott Momaday (1973 Fulbright U.S. Scholar to the Soviet Union) is a Kiowa novelist, essayist, and poet. He became the first Native American to win the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction for his work House Made of Dawn. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the recipient of the National Medal of Arts and a Guggenheim Fellowship.

John Updike (1973 Fulbright U.S. Scholar to Ghana and Nigeria) was a novelist, literary critic, and poet who twice won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. He is best known for his “Rabbit” series of novels, which chronicle the life of a fictional middle-class American.

Chinua Achebe (1987 Fulbright Visiting Scholar from Nigeria) was a Nigerian novelist, poet, and critic who is regarded as one of the most influential figures in modern African literature. The author of 20 books, he is best known for his first novel Things Fall Apart. He was a recipient of the International Booker Prize.

Gish Jen (2002 Fulbright U.S. Scholar to China) is a writer and speaker who is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and has received a Guggenheim fellowship.   She has published short stories including “Birthmates,” and novels including Typical American, Mona in the Promised Land, The Love Wife,  World and Town, and The Resisters.

Jonathan Franzen (1981 Fulbright U.S. Student to Germany) is a celebrated novelist and essayist whose novel The Corrections won many honors, including a National Book Award. His other novels, including Freedom and Crossroads, have cemented his reputation as one of the most widely discussed and critically acclaimed modern American novelists.