Kent Place Juniors Excel at National History Day Contest

Kent Place School is pleased to announce that junior Zoe Wright of Summit advanced to the Kenneth E. Behring National History Day Contest’s National competition. Junior Anna Agathis of Bedminster placed third in the New Jersey state contest and was selected as an alternate for the National competition.

National History Day (NHD) is a non-profit educational organization based in College Park, MD. NHD offers yearlong academic programs that engage middle and high school students in conducting original research on historical topics of interest. These research-based projects are entered into contests at the local and affiliate levels, where the top student projects have the opportunity to advance to the National Contest at the University of Maryland at College Park.

Responding to the 2016 theme of Exploration, Encounter and Exchange in History, Zoe Wright created a website on Irma Stern, a South African artist who challenged the social values of apartheid through her artwork. Irma’s encounters with anti-Semitism in 1930’s Germany inspired Irma to explore South Africa with a different perspective, as she exchanged white, male, and uncommon subject matters in her art for black, female and everyday.

Anna Agathis wrote a research paper on the Cuban Refugee Crisis and examined how the Cold War encounter between the United States and Cuba sparked a Cuban Diaspora, which transformed the United States as Cuban Americans explored the opportunities and limitations of their new home. These encounters created a cultural exchange that increasingly Latinized a new American culture, Americanized Cubans, and molded culturally distinct communities.

“Zoe and Anna did an incredible amount of research for these projects. Zoe traveled to the Frick Art Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art to access their extensive archives and even Skyped with the Irma Stern Museum in South Africa. Anna personally interviewed three refugees who came to the United States during the crisis and accessed the Special Collections at the Rutgers University archives,” stated Upper School History Teacher Tim Maset. “I am so very proud of both their work.”

The National Contest will be held from June 12-16 at the University of Maryland.