Having studied in China, Canada, Austria and France, Liyi Chen is currently a fourth year HAA major and interning with the department’s online journal “Contemporaneity: Historical Presence in Visual Culture.” She was an undergraduate assistant at the University Art Gallery and Visual Media Workshop. She received a Brackenridge fellowship to conduct her honors thesis on 21st century re-presentations of the Empress Dowager and Marie Antoinette, a cross cultural comparison project overseen by Dr. Katheryn Linduff and Dr. Shirin Fozi. This semester she continued working on her thesis in Dr. Kirk Savage’s Honors Research Seminar. She is a member of the Flight 93 Memorial Research Team. She is also working with archives in the university’s special collection to conduct a research project on French Nationality Room.
At HAAARCH this year, she will be presenting on her honors thesis, entitled "Reinforcing Femininity: Exhibiting the Empress Dowager and Marie Antoinette in the 21st Century."