Nine thousand miles separate Chennai, India, from Las Cruces, New Mexico, the distance Priya Kumar, 25, travels to join two of her sisters for a one year graduate program at New Mexico State University. Busy with school work and learning all she can about the United States, it's in Professor Martin's year-long Independent Studies course where her comparison-culture learning is put to the forefront, for she must write a 50-page paper about Alexis de...