Annelise Giseburt OC ‘16

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Hiroshima, Japan (2016-18)

Last year, on the airport ride from Kyoto Station to Kansai Airport, Annelise Giseburt made a decisive choice to apply for a Shansi Fellowship, and a year later she finds herself selected as the first Obie to be awarded the new Shansi Hiroshima Fellowship. This is a full-time, two-year position working with a United Nations agency and two local NGOs on various peace-building initiatives. During her stay, Annelise intends to examine the historical context of present-day Hiroshima and the city’s importance in modern Japanese culture. In 2014, Annelise interned at Seattle’s Japan-America Society, a nonprofit dedicated to promoting mutual understanding and friendship between Japan and Washington State. An East Asian Studies and English double major, Annelise is currently taking fifth-year Japanese in preparation for the internationally administered Japanese-Language Proficiency Test, a major step towards becoming a translator in the future. When she is not busy studying, Annelise works at the Writing Center as a peer tutor and The Oberlin Review as a production editor. As for the Shansi Fellowship, she looks forward to the challenge, noting that “Multicultural experiences challenge me to think in new ways and raise the bar of whatever work I am doing.”

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An American Hiroshima-jin's 2017 (And After).
An American Hiroshima-jin's 2017 (And After).

Annelise Giseburt ‘16, Hiroshima Fellow

I came to Hiroshima to learn its history. Perhaps, to a certain extent, I’ve accomplished that goal. But over the last year or so, I’ve become increasingly interested in the history I’m witnessing.

During that time, Hiroshima occasionally felt like the center of the world. At others, it felt insurmountably removed, and no amount of modern technology could bring me closer to a homeland going through, well, a lot.

A Familiar Town.
A Familiar Town.

Annelise Giseburt ‘16, Hiroshima Fellow

There was one main reason I wanted this Fellowship: to live in Hiroshima. The city instantly captivated me when, as a college third-year, I visited for two days with my study abroad group. Dusk was falling as our bus rolled across rivers into the city, and by the time my friends and I ventured out to try to find the multi-story building filled with okonomiyaki shops, Okonomimura (we only made it to a shop across the street from the Mura, thinking we’d arrived), it was totally dark.