Elizabeth Rabe, a candidate for graduation from Hamilton College later this month, has been awarded a Fulbright Scholarship. Rabe will pursue a master's of philosophy degree in Caribbean history at the University of the West Indies at St. Augustine in Trinidad and Tobago. She will research the lives and culture of East Indian indentured laborers to Trinidad during the second half of the 19th century, then write an article to be submitted to a scholarly journal. Rabe's father, Stephen, a Hamilton alumnus of the class of 1970, was also the recipient of a Fulbright.
The purpose of the Fulbright Program is to increase mutual understanding between the people of the United States and other countries through the exchange of persons, knowledge and skills. It is designed to give recent college graduates opportunities for personal development and international experience.
The program offers invaluable opportunities to meet and work with people of the host country, sharing daily life as well as professional and creative insights. The program promotes cross-cultural interaction and mutual understanding on a person-to-person basis in an atmosphere of openness, academic integrity and intellectual freedom. The primary source of funding for the Fulbright Program is an annual appropriation made by Congress to the Department of State. The U.S. Student Program awards approximately 900 grants annually and currently operates in more than 140 countries worldwide.
Rabe has conducted research on East Indian immigrants in British Guiana and the lives of slave children in 19th century Texas. Her research culminated in her article "Slave Children of Texas: a Quantitative and Qualitative Study" that was published by the East Texas Historical Journal (January 2004). She has also published three research articles in Texas Historian.
A history and Spanish major at Hamilton, Rabe is a member of Phi Beta Kappa; she received the Freeman Foundation Asian Studies Grant; a Bristol Research Scholarship; was a member of the Hamilton women's swimming team; a tutor at Hamilton's Nesbitt-Johnston Writing Center; and a writer for the student newspaper The Spectator.
After completion of her studies in Trinidad and Tobago, Rabe hopes to enroll in law school and specialize in international human rights and labor law. She is the daughter of Genice and Stephen Rabe of Tremont Street in Dallas.
