Fulbright Scholarship to Reunite Husband and Wife
April 7, 2003
Matthew L. Basso, assistant professor of history at the University of Richmond, met his wife when both were graduate students at the University of Minnesota.
Basso was working on a Ph.D. in American studies, and Angela Smith, a New Zealand resident studying in America on a Fulbright fellowship, was working on a Ph.D. in English literature. They met at an event for a proposed union for graduate students. The union's efforts failed, but "we got a union out of it anyway," he joked, because love bloomed, and the happy couple was married last April 6 in the university's Jenkins Greek Theatre. Happy ever after? Not quite.
"It sounds crazy that we're separated," Basso said. "because most people believe that if you marry an American, you can automatically stay here and work here." Unfortunately, there was one major hurdle that trumped those rights. The Fulbright agreement she signed required her to return to New Zealand for two years, even if she were to marry. The idea was to share her knowledge back home.
So off to New Zealand she went last October to teach at Massey University in Wellington.
Basso, a former Army captain, however, found a way to end the separation. He applied for and received a Fulbright of his own. He will leave this spring to do research in Wellington as a Fulbright Scholar with additional funds from the dean of arts and sciences at Richmond.
Established in 1946 and sponsored by the United States Department of State, the Fulbright program provides funds for students, scholars and professionals to undertake graduate study, advanced research, university teaching and teaching in elementary and secondary schools.
Basso's Fulbright "wasn't just luck," he said. "I applied for the New Zealand Fulbright because I wanted to be with my wife but especially because I was intrigued by the possibility of doing a comparative study."
Basso has done quite a bit of research on the U.S. homefront during World War II. He has a book coming out with the working title "Metal of Honor: Montana's World War II Homefront, Movies, and the Social Politics of White Male Anxiety." In the book and in two articles, he shows the growth of political conservatism among white Montana miners who felt threats to their masculinity for not fighting and to their jobs from blacks and women.
"People generally think of the Greatest Generation as those who fought," Basso says. But three of every four men did not. War was an anxiety for them. They felt their status being challenged." The copper miners in his study were deferred, but "people looked at them as slackers and draft dodgers."
In the course of conversations with his wife and her family and friends, he became excited about the possibility of doing similar archival research about the New Zealand homefront on white miners in Waikato and other districts and their relationships with government, management, Maori and women.
"I was interested as a historian and as a husband wanting to know about this country where my wife was from."
One thing he's already discovered about New Zealand: "The fly fishing is unbelievable."
After his 16 months in New Zealand, Basso and his wife will move back to the states. Meanwhile, he says, his Fulbright "will make life much easier and more enjoyable."