YCAR is pleased to announce our 2019 Undergraduate Essay Award winners: Harkit Bhandal and Safa Warsi.
Safa is a fourth-year Psychology major who has spent time as a research assistant in various psychology labs at 91亚色. She is interested in culture and religion, particularly in the context of the experiences of minorities in North America. She received the award in the Asian Diaspora category. Professor Richard Lalonde nominated her PSYC 3890 paper, 鈥淰iews on the Model Minority Stereotype in a South Asian Canadian Context,鈥 for this award. The paper considers the Model Minority Stereotype (MMS), which depicts Asians as being high in certain seemingly positive attributes (e.g., competence and achievement), whilst also being high in seemingly negative traits (e.g., unsociability and emotional reservation). Research to date on this subject has largely focused on East Asian American samples, while Safa鈥檚 study explores whether MMS exists in South Asian Canadian populations.
Harkit Bhandal鈥檚 love for coffee fuels what she loves doing best鈥攔esearching, reading and writing about South Asian diasporic identities. Meghna George, Harkit鈥檚 Teaching Assistant for AP/ANTH 1120, nominated the paper in the Asia category. 鈥淯nderstandings of Military Power, Intoxication and Love in Kashmir, India鈥 focuses on how clinicians and patients鈥 understanding of substance abuse and addiction at a drug rehabilitation clinic known as the DDC reflect an extension of and resistance to military power in the Kashmir Valley.
A fourth-year undergraduate student, the majority of Harkit鈥檚 written and advocacy work focuses on how institutions have produced a negative image of second-generation Punjabi-Canadian males. She writes about how second-generation Punjabi-Canadian males contest and negotiate their gender performance dependent on the institution in which they interact. Harkit also volunteers at her local women鈥檚 shelter. Beyond her academic and advocacy work, she loves to journal and purchase journals she doesn鈥檛 need.
Both papers will be published later this year in 鈥楴ew Voices on Asia鈥, a special occasional paper series at the Centre. Congratulations Harkit and Safa!
Papers for the 2019-20 academic year can be submitted at any time and will be accepted until 30 April 2020.
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*This story was also published in YFile on 17 September 2019: