Hannah Clager, Class of 2013
Art History (Major) / African Studies (Minor)
Hannah began her studies in French at Georgetown University, while she was an art student at the Corcoran College of Art & Design in Washington, D.C. After transferring to UNC-Chapel Hill in 2010, Hannah continued with French to help her with art history research on contemporary African art.
She participated in UNC’s Summer French Program at the University of Paris – Sorbonne in the summer of 2011 and used her French skills when she moved to Dakar for fieldwork in 2012. While in Senegal, Hannah interviewed West African artists in French/Wolof about their work in the 2012 Dak’Art Contemporary African Art Biennial for her art history honors thesis. After graduation, Hannah worked at a law firm in Florida, where she was hired to facilitate French/English translations for clients living in Madagascar, Île de la Réunion, and France.
Hannah will be going to Harvard University this fall to complete her master’s degree in Middle Eastern Studies after spending 14 months in Morocco as a Fulbright Student Researcher in 2016-17. In Morocco, she studied Arabic and French, and completed a case study of the new Mohammed VI Contemporary and Modern Art Museum in Rabat, closely examining the politics of artistic production, education, and censorship since the Moroccan ‘Arab Spring’. Her studies at Harvard will focus on U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East and North Africa, human rights and refugee affairs, and cultural diplomacy in the MENA region.
Hannah was recently selected as a 2018 Thomas R. Pickering Foreign Affairs Fellow, where she will transition to a career in the U.S. Foreign Service following graduation from Harvard and will continue to use the French language as she works as an American diplomat overseas.