Christian Bevilacqua ’24, a Social Studies Education and Geography major in the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, College of Arts and Sciences (A&S), and School of Education, is one of five Syracuse University undergraduates selected as recipients of the Critical Language Scholarship (CLS), through which they will immerse themselves in intensive language study in summer 2024.
Also a Remembrance Scholar, Bevilacqua will study Urdu in Lucknow, India. This is his second time participating in the CLS program; he studied Hindi in Jaipur, India, in 2022.
“Participating in the CLS Urdu program is an exciting opportunity for me to further my language skills and expand my cultural understanding of South Asia,” he says.
Bevilacqua will be an incoming first-year master’s student in geography in the Maxwell School in the fall, and he looks forward to learning Urdu to better prepare himself for future research projects.
“I am interested in studying the experiences of South Asian migrant workers in urban cities of the Arabian Peninsula,” says Bevilacqua. “Learning Urdu as a lingua franca will enable me to connect with their stories, experiences, feelings, and expressions of art and memory, which is crucial for understanding how transnational migrant workers construct and navigate a sense of home and community.”