Buffalo State College:

Press release from Buffalo State College:

Laurie Kaiser

October 8, 2021

Fulbright Scholar awards are a prestigious honor based on academic and professional achievement, demonstrated leadership in a candidate’s field, and the potential to foster long-term cooperation between countries. For Aimable Twagilimana, Buffalo State College professor of English, the Fulbright served an even greater purpose: it saved his life.

In 1992, the Rwanda native was awarded a Fulbright scholarship to study English in the doctoral program at the University at Buffalo (UB).

“If I hadn’t gotten that scholarship, I wouldn’t have escaped Rwanda before the genocide against the Tutsis,” said Twagilimana, who had previously earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in English at the National University of Rwanda and a master’s degree in applied linguistics from the University of Reading in the United Kingdom.

The 1994 genocide resulted in the deaths of 1 million individuals, primarily Tutsi, including Twagilimana’s father. Eventually, Twagilimana was able to process some of the horror by writing books, including The Debris of Ham: Ethnicity, Regionalism, and the 1994 Rwandan Genocide (2003) and the novel Manifold Annihilation (1996).

Twagilimana has been awarded a Fulbright scholarship or fellowship no fewer than four times throughout his career. At UB, he soared through his studies, completing his doctorate in American literature and critical theory in just three years. The day after he defended his dissertation, August 31, 1995, he stepped into a Buffalo State English classroom, and there he has remained, reaching the level of full professor in 2004.

Through his tenure, he’s kept close ties in Africa. Soon after becoming a U.S. naturalized citizen in 2006, he was chosen as a Fulbright scholar to teach American literature at Cheikh Anta Diop University of Dakar, in Senegal, for the 2008–2009 academic year.

“I’m proud of that time because several of the students I oversaw went on to earn doctorates,” he said, “including at universities in Senegal, the United States, and Belgium.”

From 2009 through 2013, he served as a visiting professor at the University of Kibungo in the Eastern province of Rwanda.

In 2014, he was awarded a Fulbright to teach courses in language and linguistics in the College of Education at the University of Rwanda. During this stint, he also conducted research on Rwanda’s history, economic development, financial institutions, and international relations for an encyclopedia project.

“In 2009, Rwanda shifted from French to English for its language of instruction,” he said. “It was a difficult time for many elementary and high school teachers and university instructors who had taught in French for decades.”

While there, he also advised the university and its board of directors on best practices in university governance and helped colleagues develop and revise curriculum programs that train elementary and high school teachers.

All these experiences influenced his teaching at Buffalo State.

“I included more African writers in my curriculum,” he said, “and invited African scholars to speak to my students as a result of getting to know them through the Fulbright experience.”

This press release was produced by Buffalo State College. The views expressed here are the author’s own.