Courtesy of Karthik Sangameswaran

Sangameswaran proudly holds up the book his work is published in.

Stepping onstage in the Sacramento State University auditorium during April of his junior year, senior Karthik Sangameswaran accepted a cerulean ribbon, accrediting his status as a state finalist in the 2024 National History Day (NHD) competition. 

In front of him, an impressed audience applauded his group’s work, a documentary detailing the rise of conservative Republicans into political prominence in recent decades. Novice filmmakers and all juniors at the time they began, Sangameswaran and his fellow groupmates Anushka Tadikonda and Ryan Heshmati made the documentary primarily in iMovie, and it impressed the judges so much they quickly qualified past the County to the State-level competition, before ranking just one place away from competing in Nationals. 

This wasn’t the first time Sangameswaran participated in the event. During his sophomore year, while researching history events to participate in, Sangameswaran came in contact with the head of the local NHD chapter, who, coincidentally, was Faith Stackhouse Daly, one of the AP U.S. History (APUSH) teachers teaching at Saratoga High at the time. In an email, she invited Sangameswaran to come into her class during tutorial and helped him start his application for the competition ordinarily reserved for upperclassmen. 

He began creating an exhibit about Sadie Alexander (1898-1989) — the first African American woman to earn a Ph.D. in economics — Sangameswaran and his partner senior Alan Cai made it past the county competition and qualified to compete in the state competition.

During his junior year NHD project, as Sangameswaran was researching conservative Republicans, he realized there was such an abundance of material regarding the subject that he decided to write his own research paper on content not covered in the group’s documentary. That research paper took Sangameswaran two months to complete.

Sangameswaran said the Saratoga High website has a multitude of resources, which he used to find a journal that publishes high school historical research papers: The Concord Review. 

Sangameswaran submitted his paper — “Conservative Republicans, an Ideological History of the Republican Party from 1952 to 1994” — to the journal, and in August 2024 received an email from editor-in-chief Robert Nasson confirming his paper was accepted for publication, no easy feat since according to Sangameswaran, the journal only accepts a mere 5% of submissions. During the submission process, Sangameswaran had to pay the yearly fee to be a subscriber, a requirement for those interested in being an author. Sangameswaran’s paper was then published last September. 

Sangameswaran’s thesis goes into a deep dive into the Republican’s party shift from an ideologically moderate party in the 1950s to an ideologically conservative party in the 1990s. He describes this shift in four subsections, each a different time period in history: 1952 to 1960, after the moderate takeover; 1964 with Goldwater, the first conservative Republican; 1968 to 1980, when conservatives started to take over the party, specifically with Reagan heading the takeover; and finally 1994, when the Republicans complete their sweep of Congress. 

Through Concord, Sangameswaran’s 40-page paper is currently being sold on Amazon for $5. Interested buyers can purchase single papers, or the entire issue, which includes all the accepted papers. 

This accomplishment marks Sangameswaran as one of the only students from SHS to be published in The Concord Review — although students at nearby schools such as Los Gatos High and Harker tend to publish more often. Sangameswaran believes this is the case because Saratoga High is a STEM-focused school, leading to a lack of visibility for these opportunities to those who might be interested. 

Sangameswaran attributed his initial interest in history to watching historical movies during the COVID-19 pandemic as a way to pass the time and cure his boredom.  

“I was just watching all these movies,” Sangameswaran said. “I started to get interested in the context of the times.”

Beyond history competitions and research papers, Sangameswaran further pursued his passion for history by taking numerous courses at De Anza College, including Modern Latin American History and Medieval Western Civilization in his junior year, and Ancient Western Civilization in his senior year. 

Sangameswaran is also an avid member of the History Bowl team. 

Speaking on his love for history, Sangameswaran said: “I like everything that’s not today. Everything was different. It’s a totally different world. The way people talked, the way people thought as a result, and then the way people acted. And this is the roots where we came today.”

Sangameswaran believes history can be looked at aesthetically too, through pieces of art. Though he has several favorite pieces, “The Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776” by John Trumbull stands out the most to him, even though he finds it is not an entirely historically accurate depiction of the signing of one of America’s founding documents.

“It was far more chaotic [in real life]. In the painting it was very orderly,” he noted.

Beyond tracing back the origins of societies and admiring famous artworks, Sangameswaran also enjoys the practical usage history offers. After he graduates high school, Sangameswaran plans to study history as his undergraduate major, before pursuing a career in law. 

“The philosophy [of history] — seeing what worked, what didn’t work — I just think that’s fascinating to look at,” Sangameswaran said. “We can learn so much from history.”