Senior Honors Theses
To read History majors’ Senior Honors Theses from 2014 onwards, visit the Carolina Digital Repository.
2019 Honors Theses
Name: Max Conley
Thesis Adviser: Morgan Pitelka
Title: “The World Whole: An Environmental History of Japanese Space Power”
Name: Daniel Harrell
Thesis Adviser: Iqbal Sevea
Title: “A Man Alone: Muhammad Ali Jinnah and the All-India Muslim League’s Support for the British during World War II”
Name: Jordan Jenkins
Thesis Adviser: Jim Leloudis
Title: “The Voice of the ‘Little Man’: Jesse Helms’s ‘Southern Viewpoint’ in Conservative Media and Politics, 1960-1972”
Name: Luke Kessel
Thesis Adviser: Eren Tasar
Title: “The Russian Bookmen: A Story of Survival and Revival during the Mongol Occupation, 1237-1480”
Name: Denton Ong
Thesis Adviser: Benjamin Waterhouse
Title: “Emergency Wars”
Name: Jackson Parrish
Thesis Adviser: Harry Watson
Title: “Spiritual Resistance: The Submission and Defiance of Evangelical Slaves in the Antebellum South”
Name: Kate Warren
Thesis Advisers: Marcus Bull and Wayne Lee
Title: “Knights and Knighthood: Perception and Social Change in the Late Twelfth-Century Angevin Empire”
2018 Honors Theses
Name: Jacob Bell
Thesis Adviser: Louise McReynolds
Title: “The Autocrat and the Revolutionary: Catherine the Great, John Paul Jones, and the Enlightenment’s ‘Woman Question’”
Name: Mary Grady Bell
Thesis Adviser: Lloyd Kramer
Title: “The Nationalist Meanings of 20th Century Olympic Games: Conflicting National Identities and Memories in Mexico, Germany, and America”
Name: Sydney Bezanson
Thesis Adviser: Malinda Maynor Lowery
Title: “The ‘C’ in the Name: Religion and Student Activism in the Campus Y at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1930-1990”
Name: Katherine Frances Cayton
Thesis Adviser: Karen Auerbach
Title: “A ‘Third Possibility’ Revolution: The Success of Émigré Reporting Networks at Radio Free Europe During Poland’s 1956 Thaw”
Name: Rebekah Cockram
Thesis Adviser: Michael Morgan
Title: “Cession and Retreat: Negotiating Hong Kong’s Future 1979 – 1984”
Name: Olivia Holder
Thesis Adviser: Michelle King
Title: “Possessions of Empire: The Construction of Imperial Identities in Britain and China”
Name: Jeremy Howell
Thesis Adviser: Lauren Jarvis
Title: “The Dethroning: Prester John’s Demise and The Shaping of Modern Ethiopia”
Name: Lacey Hunter
Thesis Adviser: Wayne Lee
Title: “An Expansive Subjecthood in Eighteenth-Century British North America: The Life and Perspectives of Sir Guy Carleton”
Name: Matthew McKnight
Thesis Adviser: Molly Worthen
Title: “’Not a Square Inch’: Abraham Kuyper and the Role of Epistemology in Shaping the American Evangelical Response to Modernity”
Name: James Messmer
Thesis Adviser: Brett Whalen
Title: “The Final Judgement: John Bale and an Apocalyptic Justification of English Protestantism”
Name: Alexander Peeples
Thesis Adviser: Lauren Jarvis
Title: “Relearning Ujamaa: Education in Tanzania from 1954 to 2002”
Name: Michael Purello
Thesis Adviser: Tobias Hof
Title: “Protesting the ‘Condonation of Savagery’: American Catholics and Non-Involvement in the Spanish Civil War”
Name: Sophie Rupp
Thesis Adviser: Flora Cassen
Title: “The Man Who Meant Too Much: Domestic and International Implications of the Beilis Case”
Name: Michael Sanders
Thesis Adviser: Lloyd Kramer
Title: “Voltaire’s Use of the Other to Reform France: A Philosophe’s Critique of Society”
Name: Emma Watts
Thesis Adviser: James Leloudis
Title: “The Wimmin Are With Us to Stay’: Women’s Social Activities at the University of North Carolina from 1897-1946”
2017 Honors Theses
Name: Georgia Brunner
Thesis Adviser: Lauren Jarvis
Title: “Trying Trauma and Memory in Post-Genocide Rwanda”
Name: Elizabeth Chase
Thesis Adviser: Molly Worthen
Title: “Disease and Distrust: Mandatory Premarital HIV Testing in Illinois”
Name: Michael Hensley
Thesis Adviser:Marcus Bull
Title: “History-writing as a ‘Bulwark againts the Passage of Time:’ The Middle Byzantine World through the Eyes of Michael Psello, Anna Komnene, and John Kinnamos”
Name: Roy Ji
Thesis Adviser: Lloyd Kramer
Title: “Universalism Calling: French Distortion and Invention of the the Image of China from Jesuits to Enlightenment Philosophes, circa 1560-1800”
Name: Adrienne Kronovet
Adviser: William Barney
Title: “A General Change: Ulysses S. Grant’s Evolving Relationship with the Jewish Community, 1862-1885”
Name: Charles Lumsden
Thesis Adviser: Louis A. Perez, Jr.
Title: “A Fratricidal Arm: Cuban Agency and the Abrogation of the Platt Amendment”
Name: Meredith Miller
Adviser: Chad Bryant
Title: “When Paris Met Bohemia: Discovering the Czech Nation through its Art, 1900-1938”
Name: Justine Orlovsky-Schnitzler
Thesis Adviser: John Sweet
Title: “Susan Hill at the Supreme Court: Reproductive Rights Advocacy in the Deep South Remembered”
Name: Ethan Tyler
Thesis Adviser: Sarah Shields
Title: “‘A British Lake’: Kuwait and the 1913 Anglo-Ottoman Convention”
2016 Honors Theses
Name: Griffin Creech
Thesis Adviser: Donald Raleigh
Title: “Imagining Russia, Informing America: Samuel N. Harper, U.S. Public Opinion, and the Russian Revolution, 1916 – 1921”
Name: Augusta Dell’Omo
Thesis Adviser: Susan Pennybacker
Title: “Tending the Enemy’s Flock: German Pastors and POWs in Britain, 1940 – 1955”
Name: Sam Fletcher
Thesis Adviser:Brett Whalen and Marcus Bull
Title: “Constructing Sanctity in the Long Twelfth Century: The Miracles of St. Anselm, St. Bernard, and St. Francis”
Name: Dana Landress
Thesis Adviser: Raúl Necochea
Title: “The Nomenclature Precedent: A Pre-History of the Human Genome Project”
Name: Tyler Litke
Adviser: William Barney
Title: “Yearning for Normalcy: Marriage and Gender in the Slaveholding Class during the Civil War”
Name: Brent McKnight
Thesis Adviser: James Leloudis
Title: “Festival Tourism: Advertising the Western North Carolina Tourist Industry Through Cultural Performance in the Cherokee Indian Fair, the Rhododendron Festival, and the Grandfather Mountain Highlight Games”
Name: Mari Moss
Adviser: Chad Bryant
Title:“Adaptation, Immigration, and Identity: The Tensions of American Jewish Food Culture”
Name: Tyra Pearson
Thesis Adviser: John Sweet
Title: “‘Unnatural Mother’: Race, Gender, and Infanticide in the Nineteenth Century”
2015 Honors Theses
Name: Emily Karen Cathey
Thesis Adviser: Harry Watson
Title: “Working and Playing”: Mill-sponsored Baseball in the Early Twentieth Century in the Peidmont of North Carolina
Name: Abigail Cooksey
Thesis Adviser: James Leloudis
Title: “In a Nice Way”: Moderation as a Tool of Racial Oppression During North Carolina School Desegregation from 1954-56
Name: Katie Crook
Thesis Adviser: Benjamin Waterhouse
Title: Duty to Defend: McNeill Smith and the Education of Southern White Liberalism
Name: Murphy Donohue
Thesis Adviser: W. Fitzhugh Brundage
Title:Clashes on King Street: The Role of State Officials in the 1964 St. Augustine Racial Crisis
Name: Meg Foster
Adviser: John Sweet
Title: A Sisyphean Task: Anti-Rape Activism at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1970s-1990s
Name: Meghan Victoria Herwig
Thesis Adviser: Benjamin Waterhouse
Title: The Balancing Act: Nixon, Taiwan, and the Tactics of Détente
Name: Emily Kowalczyk
Adviser: Wayne Lee
Title: Captives, Conflict, and Conquest: The Changing Roles of Prisoners in Anglo-Indian Warfare, 1754-1765
Name: Kayla Leonard
Thesis Adviser: Susan Pennybacker
Title: The Wandering Collection: The India Museum and Perceptions of Empire
Name: Griffin Lerner
Thesis Adviser: Lisa Lindsay
Title: Neither Black nor White: Louisiana Creoles of Color, South African Coloureds, and the Struggle for Identity, Nationhood, and Belonging
Name: Jan Therese Michael
Thesis Adviser: Klaus Larres
Title: Controlling Chaos: An Analysis of Zbigniew Brzezinski’s Political Theories and Foreign Policy, 1977-1981.
Name: Andrew Soboeiro
Thesis Adviser: Susan Pennybacker
Title: Britons, Beasts, and Benighted Savages: British Superiority in Nineteenth Century Children’s Periodicals
Name: Peter Vogel
Thesis Adviser: James Leloudis
Title:Dividing the Donkey: Modern Racism and the Dissolution of North Carolina’s Democratic Party, 1963-1968
Name: Brenna Renee Yellin
Thesis Adviser: Konrad Jarausch
Title: Immigrants in their Own Homes: East German Women and the Effects of German Reunification
2014 Honors Theses
Name: Lauren Crawford
Thesis Adviser: Michael Morgan
Title: The Human Spill: Economic and Social Impacts of the Response to and Recovery from the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill
Name: Gregg Godwin
Thesis Adviser: Jerma Jackson
Title: Black Women, Domestic Work and Expanding Resistance, 1909-1945
Name: Katie Harper
Thesis Adviser: Marcus Bull
Title: Thou Shalt Not Suffer A Witch To Live: How the Incorporation of Sorcery into Heresy Critically Contributed to the Witch Stereotype of the Late Middle Ages
Name: Maggie Howell
Thesis Adviser: Lloyd Kramer
Title: The Changing ‘Vichy Syndrome’: Sites of Holocaust and Algerian Traumas in Official French Memory
Name: Eric Medlin
Thesis Adviser: Molly Worthen
Title: Populist Appeals to Europe and their Implications, 1883-1908
Name: Jessica Stone
Thesis Adviser: Klaus Larres
Title: Humanitarian Intervention in US Foreign Policy: The Case of Kosovo
Name: Grace Tatter
Thesis Adviser: James L. Leloudis
Title: The Struggle for Racial Equality in Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools
Name: Liz Tolleson
Thesis Adviser: Zaragosa Vargas
Title: North American Female Cartoonists of the 19th and 20th Centuries
Name: Michael Welker
Thesis Adviser: James L. Leloudis
Title: Nothing Without Demand: Black Power and Student Activism on North Carolina College Campuses, 1967-1973
Name: Burt Westermeier
Thesis Adviser: Marcus Bull
Title: The Impact of Pilgrimage on Local Communities and the Medieval Expansion of Europe in the Twelfth Century
Name: Tom Wolf
Thesis Adviser: Molly Worthen
Title: Bolshevizing America: C.L.R. James and the Black Vanguard
2013 Honors Theses
Name: Kali Abu-Sharr
Thesis Adviser: Marcus Bull
Title: “Forming a Legacy through Building, Literature, and Gift-Giving in the Golden Age of Justinian”
Name: Claire Burridge
Thesis Adviser: Richard J. A. Talbert
Title: “A Fresh Perspective on a Forgotten Community: The Case of Gabii”
Name: Cassie Etter-Wenzel
Thesis Adviser: Karen Hagemann
Title: “Feminism and Peace: Women in the Japanese Peace Movement of the 1970s and 1980s”
Name: Steven Garbin
Thesis Adviser: Lloyd S. Kramer
Title: “Interpreting Democracy: Tocqueville and Chateaubriand on Political Freedom, Frontier Culture, and the Decline of the French Aristocracy”
Name: Sam Hobbs
Thesis Adviser: W. Fitzhugh Brundage
Title: “Architects of Memory in the Postwar South: The Origins and Evolution of the Lost Cause”
Name: Hillary Hollowood
Thesis Adviser: Joseph T. Glatthaar
Title: “A Blessing and a Curse: The North Carolina Railroad and the American Civil War in Rowan County, North Carolina 1850–1870”
Name: Derrick Kay
Thesis Adviser: Zaragosa Vargas
Title: “Coal Mining in North Carolina: A Forgotten Example of Southern Industrialization”
Name: Lawson Kuehnert
Thesis Adviser: James L. Leloudis
Title: “‘Our South Has Changed’: The Popular Response to Civil Rights in North Carolina and the Evolution of a Social Vision, 1954–1964”
Name: Anna Langley
Thesis Adviser: Iqbal Singh Sevea
Title: “The Minority Search for Belonging: Jews and Bengalis in London’s East End, 1890–present”
Name: John Runge
Thesis Adviser: Raúl Necochea
Title: “Yellow Fever and Medical Helplessness: Lessons from the Past on Caregivers and Patients When There Is No Cure”
Name: Corey Vines
Thesis Adviser: Malinda Maynor Lowery
Title: “On the Eve of Change: The Mental, Social, and Political Journey of African Americans during World War I”
Name: Luke Wander
Thesis Adviser: Michael Tsin
Title: “Shaking the Whole World: the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution as Global History, 1966–1976”
2012 Honors Theses
Name: Nick Andersen
Thesis Adviser: Jerma Jackson
Title: “Too Real to Be Funny”: Social Protest and Cultural Failure in Four Post World War II American Operas, 1934–1954
Name: Gwendolyn Bellinger
Thesis Adviser: Jay Smith
Title: An Examination of New Political Roles in the Centralization of English and French Witch Trials, 1580–1620
Name: Kelsey Blake
Thesis Adviser: Marcus Bull
Title: The Perceptions of British History and Welsh Identity in the Twelfth Century
Name: Molly Cunningham
Thesis Adviser: Donald Reid
Title: “You Can’t Go Home Again”: Exile from Communist Central Europe after 1968
Name: Ameila Kennedy
Adviser: Marcus Bull
Title: Bodies Breaking Down: Pain, Suffering, and Christian Identity in Merovingian Gaul, c. 481–751
Name: Abigail Lewis
Thesis Adviser: Donald Reid
Title: Fifty Years of Return: Accounts of Jewish Holocaust Survivors to France, 1945 to Today
Name: Jessica Malitoris
Adviser: Karen Hagemann
Title: “Equal but Different”: Women and the “Women Question” in the United Nations, 1945–1975
Name: Cassandra McGuire
Thesis Adviser: Zaragosa Vargas
Title: Lost Daughters of the Confederacy: Common White Women in Civil War Era North Carolina
Name: Paul Rosser
Thesis Adviser: Heather Williams
Title: Breaking Barriers: Turning Obstacles into Motivation to Escape