Shanon Lee is a fourth–year psychology and political science double major, minoring in history. Her experience within all three fields has led to an interest in memory studies, including
postmemory, multidirectional memory, and collective memory. Under Professor Michael Chwe, she is completing her senior thesis about the progression from memory, to narratives, to dominant narratives, to collective memory. Within this progression, she will analyze driving factors—i.e., social, cultural, political, and legal channels—that fuel the competition between narratives, and how these dynamics give dominance to one narrative. She will also examine how a dominant narrative may take shape into a collective memory while investigating the fluidity of such boundaries between stages. The basis of her research will be done through a comparative historical analysis of two cases: South Korea’s Gwangju Uprising of 1980 and Mexico’s Tlatelolco Massacre of 1968. Shanon hopes her thesis will contribute to the field of memory studies in clarifying some of these ambiguous terms while also setting the stage for further research on the implications of the mechanisms through which memory can be sculpted, especially after events of atrocity. Outside of research, Shanon enjoys baking banana bread, reading, and crocheting rugs. In the future, she plans to pursue a PhD in political science or history and become a professor.