This year’s collection of papers written by John Near and Mitra Family endowment scholars have some fascinating titles. Each year, the scholars are honored at a reception in the Nichols Hall auditorium, celebrating the completion of their intensive research and writing projects.

Established in 2009 and 2011, respectively, The John Near Excellence in History Education Endowment Fund and Mitra Family Endowment for the Humanities have allowed students to pursue research on a wide variety of topics. At the reception, students, their teachers and their mentors come together for the formal presentation of the papers, after which Harker’s librarians archive them online for posterity.

At the reception, each student talked about the journey to self-knowledge that comes from writing such a complex paper. Each was generous in acknowledging the program’s value to their growth and in praising the mentors who helped them succeed. Each scholar had vivid memories of the road to completing their paper.

2018-19 Near Scholars:

• Logan Bhamidipaty, mentored by Byron Stevens and Lauri Vaughan: “Plain Language: Henry George, Denis Kearney, and the Anti-Chinese Movement in Nineteenth-Century California”
• Prameela Kottapalli, mentored by Mark Janda and Sue Smith: “Deliberately Unafraid: Audre Lorde as a Pioneer of Intersectional Feminism”
• Leon Lu, mentored by Carol Green, Susan Nace and Meredith Cranston: “Soul of the Jazz Resistance: Charles Mingus and the Civil Rights Movement”

• Kelsey Wu, mentored by Kelly Horan and Sue Smith: “The Loneliness Disease: Challenges of First-Generation Chinese-American Parents of Autistic Children”

2018-19 Mitra Scholars:

• Nikhil Dharmaraj, mentored by Clifford Hull and Meredith Cranston: “The Evolution of Evolution: Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura and Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species”
• Ryan Guan, mentored by Ruth Meyer and Meredith Cranston: “The Rattle of the Bones: Reading T. S. Eliot’s ‘The Waste Land’ as a Response to World War I”
• Haris Hosseini, mentored by Andrea Milius, Josh Martinez and Sue Smith: “Unveiled: The Appropriation of Afghan Women in the War on Terror”
• Katherine Tian, mentored by Damon Halback, Chris Spenner and Lauri Vaughan: “Does God Play Dice? Understanding the Role of Uncertainty at the Intersection of Antirealist Philosophy and Quantum Mechanics”