Seniors in the Independent History Research (IHR) Fellowship program presented their findings at the third annual IHR Symposium. The event included a gallery exhibition of ongoing research from junior fellows and formal presentations and panel discussions from senior fellows on their final research papers.

The 15 seniors participating in the IHR program explored a range of historical questions that spanned disciplines, centuries, and continents. Their scholarly research examined topics including labor movements in nineteenth-century England, military rule in Brazil, post-apartheid South Africa, Jewish refugee experiences in Shanghai, the Civil Rights Movement in the United States, China’s Cultural Revolution, and World War II service and recognition. Other projects investigated the intersections of art, activism, religion, fashion, urban planning, visual culture, and performance, demonstrating how historical inquiry can illuminate issues of identity, power, representation, and social change across diverse cultural and political contexts.

IHR Fellows at Spence embark on a two-year commitment beginning in their junior year to research a topic of their own choosing. By the end of their senior year, fellows have crafted and produced an original work of scholarship based on secondary and archival primary source research that can be submitted for publication or competition.

In her opening remarks, Head of Upper School Rachael Flores, who also teaches in the History Department, noted the distinctive endeavor of pursuing and presenting historical research: “What I love about the work that you are doing is that it represents the best of what historians do: You connect the past with the present, not just in finding connections, but you find significance in the world that we’re in today because of the research that you’ve done.”

Congratulations to the graduating IHR fellows on their culminating research.

Helena A. - Stability at a Cost: Economic Control and Social Unrest in Military Brazil

Ahana C. - More Than a War Against the Machines: How the Political and Economic Climate in Nottinghamshire at the Turn of the Nineteenth Century Influenced the 1812 Luddite Riots

Mia D. - “Hath not a Jew Eyes?” How Reviews of William Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice Reveal the Evolution of Sentiments about Jewish People Through Time

Elodie H. - The Life of A Showgirl: The Ziegfeld Girls’ Rise to Fame at the Turn of the Twentieth Century 

Amelia K. - New York City Beyond the Blueprint: Grassroots Resistance and the Reimagining of Urban Authority in Greenwich Village in the 1960s

Margot K. - Art as Resistance: Political Art and Activism During the AIDS Crisis in 1980s NYC

Samara K. - How Western Exhibitions Have Portrayed the Paisley Motif and Kashmiri Sawl, 1851-1999

Sienna L. - The Women Air Force Service Pilots of WWII: A Three-Decade Fight for Recognition and Justice

Eliana L. - Beyond the Blackboard: The Impact of the Kadoorie School on Jewish Refugees in Shanghai during World War II

Anaiah N. - The Intersection Between Faith and Freedom: How Religion Shaped the Vision and Strategy of the Civil Rights Movement

Angel O. - Origins of American Institutionalization: Exploring the Intentions and Conditions of the First Asylums for the Poor 

Danielle P. - The Machinery of the Two Nations: Structural Inequality, Economic Dispossession, and the International Weaponization of White Victimhood in Post-Apartheid South Africa

Lianna P. - The Disconnected Memory: How the “Down to the Countryside” Re-Education Movement Defined China’s Lost Generation

Asha P. - Lord Ganesha Across Time and Space: Continuity and Adaptation in Hindu Visual Culture

Hayden V Z. - Hulls Gone Wild: How America’s Extreme Clippers Turned Wind into Wealth