2nd Lieutenant Christopher Hebert ’21, Field Artillery

Originally from Coral Springs, Florida, Chris graduated as an English major and will soon head to Belgium as a Fulbright Scholar. At West Point, he served as company executive officer and competed with the Company G1 Sandhurst (military skills) team. He was the Cadet-in-charge of the Creative Writing Forum, taking first place in the John Calabro Night of the Arts Poetry Competition in his firstie (senior) year for his work “You Song.” His poetry was published in The Allegheny Review. He has also participated in two summer programs with the FBI, becoming certified in Crisis Negotiations, and spending a few weeks with the FBI’s Counterterrorism Fly Team in Washington D.C. Chris’ interest in postcolonial literatures has led him to conduct an independent study, culminating in a paper “Deconstructing Racialized Depictions of Women in Heart of Darkness and Season of Migration to the North,” which he presented at the American Comparative Literature Association’s undergraduate conference. His interests in Africa led him to work with Dr. Frey on his Fulbright application, and he further explored his interests by taking HI 463 and focusing on the theories of nationalism, colonialism, and imperialism. As a Fulbright scholar, he will pursue a Master’s in African Studies at Ghent University. He will focus his research on identity formation in Rwandan literary works and cultural productions before and after Belgian colonization, and he hopes one day to work in US Army Africa Command. His first duty station will be Grafenwöhr, Germany, where he will serve as a Field Artillery Officer. Chris has since completed his doctorate in African Studies.