Kahn Student Fellows Presentation Showcase

Friday, Apr. 29, 2022, 12:15-2:15 p.m., Online

Kahn Institute Student Fellows will present their research from this year's long-term projects, Coping with Democratic Precarity and the Prospects for Democratic Renewal, and Democracies Redux: Resumptions, Resilience, Reconciliation, and Restoration. All are welcome; register to attend. 

Student Fellows will give 15-minute presentations on wide-ranging topics pertaining to democracy (see below). Feel free to attend for portions, or the entire event.

Student Presenters

Cody Bloomfield ’22
“Creating The Nuclear Option: Stories of Nuclear Fervor, Folly, and Fallout”

Update on The Nuclear Option podcast: what’s new, what I learned, and why nuclear history matters.

Erin Oppel ’22
“Changing the International System: Democratic Backsliding and Autocratic Control of the United Nations”

Discussing the scope and effects of democratic backsliding in the UN, and asking how authoritarian regimes have utilized UN elections to monopolize and shape the agendas of UN bodies, defend their systems of governance, create an enabling environment for their actions, and contribute to the global rise of democratic backsliding.

Keelan Clifford ’23J
“Memory and Mythology in the Context of the Troubles”

Exploring the role of rumor, gossip, and shame in 1970s Belfast through literature and oral history.

Sadie Buerker ’22
“Hip-Hop Democracy in Hong Kong: (Sub)cultural Protest in the Contemporary Pro-Democracy Movement”

Examining the use of hip-hop as protest music across three decades of unrest in contemporary Hong Kong.

Matlhabeli Molaoli ’22
“We are not Lazy, We are Unemployed: Towards an Ethnography of Basotho Women’s Unemployment”

What can the recent #BachaShutDown movement tell us about Basotho women’s experience of unemployment? This presentation will explore the intersections of class, Sesotho patriarchy, and higher education to consider what young women gain when they cannot find work.

Amrita Acharya ’22
“Democratization of Mapping and Participatory Design in Northampton, MA”

Studying how delineations and designs of places can be reimagined through citizen mapping and the facilitation of creative spaces. 

Eugenia Yuan ’23

Charlie Diaz ’22
“Student Protest as Democratic Placemaking”

Exploring selected documents from the Smith archives and discussing how they speak to the past, current moment and future of Smith College.