Steinbrecher Fellowship

Casey Bush has studied the Holocaust since fifth grade, when she read “Number the Stars,” a book about a 10-year-old Danish girl who teams up with the Danish Resistance to help her Jewish friend and others flee the Nazis in Copenhagen. As a Steinbrecher Fellow and history major, Bush studied the topic of forgiveness among survivors at the United States Holocaust Museum. She also traveled to the CANDLES Holocaust Museum in Indiana to interview founder Eva Kor about her decision to forgive Nazi Dr. Josef Mengele, who performed experiments on Kor and her twin sister during World War II. Bush stayed in touch with Kor until the 85-year-old’s death in 2019.

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Toni Armstrong, an art history and ancient civilization double major, visited several art museums in Europe to explore the choices exhibition designers make when creating modern art galleries, and how these choices inform audience understanding. She blogged about her impressions of the exhibits and their designers.

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Julianna Lugg, a media, culture and the arts major, traveled to the smallest towns in each of New England’s six states to share their unique stories. Camera in hand, she chronicled life in each of the communities, producing a series of short documentaries called “Small Town Stories.”

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Charline Kirongozi attended the Charleston Natural Hair Expo in Charleston, South Carolina, as part of her research into the historic, political, and cultural significance of how Africans and African-Americans style their hair. A political science major, Kirongozi later developed workshops for teen girls that promoted self-confidence and combated societal prejudices that teach young black women to reject their natural hair.

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Sherief Eldeeb, a psychology major, worked with Professor Kymberlee O’Brien at the Health Psychology Lab at Worcester Polytechnic Institute to test the efficacy of a mindfulness intervention with victims of trauma.

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Themal Ellawala, a psychology major, traveled to his home country of Sri Lanka to examine how culture, gender norms, and stigma affect non-heterosexuals there. He later presented his research at Clark and also at an American Psychological Association conference.

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