Rebecca Koper '97 has won a National Security Education Program undergraduate scholarship award to study comparative religions at Banares Hindu University in India next year. This summer at the University of Wisconsin, which is sponsoring her study-abroad program, she will study Hindi, and she will continue lessons in that language throughout the year.
As an independent project, she will take lessons in classical Indian dance, a study she began five years ago in her hometown of Mt. Pleasant, Michigan, and continued in an ExCo course last year. She will do related research in the history and religious significance of the devadasi dance tradition in North India, a study she plans to continue in an honors project during her senior year at Oberlin. Koper has an independent major focusing on South Asian studies and including courses in history, religion, art history, and politics; she has a second major in religion. She plans graduate study leading to a PhD in religion.
Koper's scholarship award is $12,000. She is the second Oberlin student to win a National Security Education undergraduate scholarship since the program began last year (Observer 26 May 1994).
