Center for Advanced Genocide Research Awards 2019 Beth and Arthur Lev Student Research Fellowship to Anna Lee

Anna Lee, a junior at USC from Los Angeles, California majoring in English Literature with minors in Spanish and Teaching English as a Second language (TESOL), has been chosen as the 2019 Beth and Arthur Lev Student Research Fellow at the USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research.

The Beth and Arthur Lev Student Research Fellowship provides support for one USC undergraduate or graduate student from any discipline who will be conducting research focused on testimonies of the USC Shoah Foundation Visual History Archive (VHA) and/or other related USC resources and collections. It enables a student research fellow to spend a month in residence at the Center every summer and to deliver a public lecture about his or her research in the following academic year.

Anna will be in residence at the Center from mid-May to mid-June in order to conduct research in the Visual History Archive, which she will present to the campus community in a public lecture during the 2019-2020 academic year.

During her time at the Center, Anna will conduct research on how activism following mass shootings and genocide can serve as a way for survivors to cope with trauma. She plans to compare genocide survivor testimonies from the USC Shoah Foundation Visual History Archive with interviews from survivors of mass shootings such as the 2018 school shooting in Parkland, Florida. She is interested in researching whether activism following these violent events can serve as a form of “transformative healing” for survivors, as some of the Parkland shooting survivors have described. 

Anna was first introduced to the USC Shoah Foundation Visual History Archive in a USC class entitled Spanish 304: The Art of Fiction, which was taught by Lacey Schauwecker, Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow in Latin American and Iberian Cultures at USC. Dr. Shauwecker was a summer graduate student research fellow at the Center in 2016. 

At USC, Anna has served as a research assistant in the Security and Political Economy (SPEC) Lab, is a member of the Dean’s List and a recipient of the 2018-2019 USC Continuing Student Scholarship. She also works as an intern with Asian Americans Advancing Justice and as an English tutor for middle and high school students. She is fluent in English and Korean as well as proficient in Spanish.