David Villani : Critical Language Scholarship
David Villani (‘24, History /Arabic) will continue his Arabic education this summer in Amman, Jordan. He began his Arabic studies in Morocco two years ago, and has since received the Foreign Language Area Scholarship to study in Oman, where he was a recipient of the 2023 Summer Arabic Language and Media (SALAM) scholarship. He is interested in the French presence in West Africa, with a particular focus on the personal relationships created through the practice of empire. For the past year, he’s been studying the ties between French communism and African anti-colonialism. As he continues his education with a Master’s degree in history, he will use Arabic to access African sources in an effort to complicate French narratives of conquest.
