On her first trip to Albania two years ago recent Millsaps College graduate Chelsi West saw a lot of the Eastern European country that was different from her hometown of Jackson—the ornate mosques, the language and the Mediterranean food—but on the radio she heard the familiar sound of hip-hop music.
The idea of hip-hop in a place so far from home led West to write her honors thesis about hip-hop music in Albania and Tanzania incorporating ideas of globalization, cultural transfer, performance theories and identity formation.
This research and writing, combined with excellent scholarship, is part of why the she has been awarded a Fulbright Fellowship to Albania for the upcoming year.
“I expected Albania to be so different from home and I found it was very different in some aspects but I also found some similar things. I heard a lot of American hip hop on the radio,” West said. “Albanian hip hop is very naturalistic and all about pride in the country and Albanian ethnicity.”
West will leave this fall to spend the next year living in the capital city of Tirana where she will take classes in social science and Albanian at the University of New York, Tirana.
“My stomach was a whole bunch of nerves when I first saw the letter,” West said. “I’d been checking the mail every single day since February. My dad has framed the letter and my mom’s talking about getting passports for all my family.”
West first became interested in studying other cultures when taking an Introduction to Anthropology course at Millsaps. The summer after her sophomore year she signed up to work with Millsaps associate professor of anthropology Dr. Michael Galaty on the Shala Valley Project in the northern Albanian high mountains. The international project, which Galaty directs, was designed to study the remote valley’s cultural resources and the impacts of cultural isolation.
Since her first trip West, a spring honors graduate in sociology-anthropology with a minor in Faith & Work, has traveled to Albania again and Tanzania with Millsaps College.
“Everyone stared at me because many Albanians have never seen anyone of African descent,” West said about her first trip to Albania. “One girl got my autograph; people wanted to take pictures with me and asked me if I knew Beyoncé.”
The Fulbright Program, sponsored by the Department of State, is the United States’ flagship international exchange program. The program’s goal is to increase mutual understanding between the people of the U. S. and those around the world. Fulbright recipients are graduating seniors, masters and doctoral degree candidates.
Dr. Galaty said the honor of a Fulbright punctuates West’s truly amazing undergraduate career.
“This is a great honor for Chelsi. There are only two spots available each year for Albania, and she will occupy one,” Galaty said. “Of course, she fully deserves this opportunity. She will make a wonderful representative of our city, state and country.”
West is a 2004 graduate of Murrah High School. She is the daughter of Janice and Gerald West. At Millsaps she has served as a student leader for One Campus, One Community, president of the Black Student Association, secretary of the Student Body Association and chair of the Campus Ministry Team, Midtown Community Partnership Taskgroup.
Other honors include being a member of the Senior Year Experience Steering Committee, a Ford Teaching Fellow, Homecoming Queen 2007 and Omicron Delta Kappa Freshman Woman of the Year. She is a member of the 2007-2008 Hall of Fame and the winner of the Frank and Rachel Anne Laney Award for her essay reflecting on the value of a Millsaps liberal arts education.
“It’s absolutely gorgeous,” West said of Albania. “I’ve never seen a more beautiful place.”
