Eight Harker seniors who received John Near and Mitra Family Scholar grants presented their papers to friends, teachers and family during a reception on April 25.

The John Near Endowment funds students whose research focuses on American History, while the Mitra Family Endowment supports topics in the humanities.

Elisabeth Siegel (12), a Mitra scholar, wrote on Palestinians and how they were perceived by the media.

“I started by reading a lot of background literature on postcolonial theory over the summer, and then I came up with an outline in the fall,” she said. “Then I spent a lot of vacations writing the paper; it involved a lot of first-hand research that I had to do, so I had to read a bunch of news articles.”

“It took me a whole semester to finalize my thesis,” Mitra scholar Natalie Simonian (12), who wrote about conspiracies concerning Empress Alexandra Feodorovna of Russia, said. “I’ve been really interested in the Romanov since I was six and I read a book about them. So to have a chance to do this something like this, a formal project, on something that I’ve been really interested all my life is really cool.”

Kaity Gee (12) wrote about women in the punk rock movements during the 1970s and 1980s.

“Well I was always a little bit of a punk rocker,” she said. “I was really into the music genre in the fifth grade and it kind of grew from there. Dr. Meyer, believe it or not, used to be a punk rocker.”

Scholars were also advised by various teachers from the history department.

“It was really based on my research mentors that helped me narrow it down into a topic that I could write a paper on because when I started out, I was pretty general, and I could have written a novel on what I wanted to write a paper on,” Elisabeth said. “Mr. Halback and Ms. Smith have been really helpful in helping me do that.”

This piece was originally published in the pages of The Winged Post on May 4, 2016.