ANN ARBOR—Four University of Michigan faculty will teach and conduct research abroad as recipients of Fulbright Scholar grants.

The faculty are Ruth Behar, Jennifer Robertson and Nancy Hunt of U-M Ann Arbor and Seyed Mehdian of U-M Flint.

Fulbright recipients are chosen for academic or professional achievement and for demonstrating extraordinary leadership potential in their fields.

Behar, professor in the Department of Anthropology, will spend part of the 2007 winter semester lecturing on ” Reflexivity and Methodology in Cultural Anthropology” at the University of Buenos Aires. She will also be doing research on the roots of the tango in Buenos Aires and undertaking a preliminary study of the Jewish community, which has ” a long, interesting, and anguished relationship with the city,” she said.

” I hope to form lasting intellectual relationships with colleagues in Argentina and to use the Fulbright semester as a foundation to build strong connections to the country as a researcher, teacher, and writer,” Behar said.

Robertson is a professor in the Department of Anthropology. Her research and monograph project, which will be based at Tel Aviv University from April to August 2007, involves a comparison of late 19th and early 20th century Japanese and Jewish interpretations of ” blood,” or ancestry, that shaped modern Japanese and Israeli society. She will explore bioethics and the application of biotechnologies, such as genetic testing and ideologies of