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2021-22 Virtual Near/Mitra Scholar Salons
March 22, 24, 28
The Chen Lin mentors invite you to join them for the second annual Near/Mitra Scholar Salons.

Anticipating their soon-to-be published work, this year’s scholars will present to the Harker community at individual 45-minute virtual presentations. Here’s an opportunity to dig in and hear about the research our scholars have pursued for nearly a year. We encourage students, faculty and parents to attend any or all of this year’s salons featuring these remarkable student projects.

After a brief introduction by their mentors, scholars will discuss the genesis of their research questions, their journeys, and the discoveries they made. An opportunity to ask questions will be provided at the end of each salon.

No registration is necessary. Just join the link below (library director Lauri Vaughan’s personal Zoom room) at the event time.
Link to Attend
We hope to see you there!

Lauri Vaughan and Donna Gilbert
Co-Chairs, Near/Mitra Scholar Program
Tues., March 22
Caden Lin (Mitra Scholar) | 5:45-630 p.m.
Through structural adjustment programs and austerity measures, to what extent did the International Monetary Fund’s intervention in the Sierra Leonean debt crisis between the 1960s and 1980s instigate the nation’s decade-long civil war?
Mentors: Jenny Achten, Meredith Cranston
Thurs., March 24
Michelle Liu (Mitra Scholar) | 3:45-4:30 p.m.
After the introduction of Japanese woodblock prints to Europe in the mid-19th Century, how did the genteel standards of bourgeois Parisian society influence the development of Japonisme and specifically the formalistic aesthetics of Impressionist painter Mary Cassatt?
Mentors: Meredith Cranston, Donna Gilbert

Dawson Chen (Near Scholar) | 4:45-5:30 p.m.
To what extent was the genre of American documentary pioneered by “FDR’s filmmaker” Pare Lorentz, propagandized during the 2nd Red Scare, and augmented by novel filmmaking techniques of post-classical Hollywood, to shape public perception of government economic policy and foreign threats throughout the 20th century?
Mentors: Meredith Cranston, Katy Rees

Riyaa Randhawa (Near Scholar) | 5:45-6:30 p.m.
What events and circumstances caused the shift from U.S. military medicine to colonial public health in the Philippines during the early 1900s? How were these new public health systems enforced and made sustainable? How did the U.S. public health officials recognize and address resistance from Filipino natives?
Mentors: Chris Gatto, Lauri Vaughan
Mon., March 28
Nicole Tian (Near Scholar) | 3:45-4:30 p.m.
How did female reformers during the Progressive Era use the Brandeis Brief, legal history’s first brief based on sociological data, to advance modern labor standards at the cost of individual women’s rights in Muller v. Oregon by reinforcing their ascribed social role as mothers?
Mentors: Carol Green, Amy Pelman

Alina Yuan (Mitra Scholar) | 4:45-5:30 p.m.
How did World War II affect the literary landscape in Japan by expanding the modernist movement and initiating the Buraiha (Decadent School)? Did the Buraiha further alternative/ “anti-mainstream” cultures in order to help Japanese society recover from its postwar identity crisis? If so, how?
Mentors: Lauri Vaughan, Beth Wahl

William Zhao (Mitra Scholar) | 5:45-6:30 p.m.
During the 1970s, both Portugal and Spain made successful transitions from long-standing conservative, autocratic regimes to Western democracies. However, these successes were far from guaranteed, with extremist opposition. What were the similarities and differences between how these two countries approached this process? What circumstances hindered and expedited these two movements?
Mentors: Amy Pelman, Byron Stevens
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