Senior Honors Theses

2023 Honors Theses

Name: Jared Danaher
Thesis Adviser: Harry Watson
Title: “As If Hell Boiled Over and Cast Its Sons on Our Shores: Anti-Catholicism and the Politics of North and South Carolina, 1835 – 1860”

Name: Alex Kendrick
Thesis Adviser: Marcus Bull
Title: “All the World’s A Stage: The Earl of Essex and Performative Masculinity”

Name: Emily Orland
Thesis Adviser: Erik Gellman
Title: “Pacifists and Feminists: The Challenge and Opportunity of Women’s Liberation to the Women in the Antiwar Movement, 1968-1980”

Name: Grace Taylor
Thesis Adviser: Matthew Andrews
Title:“Delivering Inequality: U.S. Maternal Health Disparities and Responses through Advocacy and Policy in the 20th Century”

Name: Liam Torres
Thesis Adviser: Erik Gellman
Title: “Scarcity Killed the Radio Laws: The Rise and Untimely Demise of the Fairness Doctrine”

Name: Christiana Wayne
Thesis Adviser: Chad Bryant
Title: “A Music of Survival: The Prague Jazz Scene and Dissent in Communist Czechoslovakia”

2022 Honors Theses

Name: Armistead Brundage
Thesis Adviser: Sarah Shields
Title: “Covering Algeria: The American Press and the French Algerian War”

Name: Elina Carpen
Thesis Adviser: Kathleen DuVal
Title: “Nature’s Lost Colony: Peace and Power in Roanoke, 1585-1590”

Name: Allison Holbrooks
Thesis Adviser: Lauren Jarvis
Title: “Reimagining Boer Women: British Perceptions of Boer Women in Southern Africa Leading Up to their Internship c. 1795-1902”

Name: Hana Khan
Thesis Adviser: Cemil Aydin
Title: “Seekinig Solidarity: The Emergence of a Black-American Connection with Palestine, 1890s-1970s”

Name: Bryanna Ledbetter
Thesis Adviser: Marcus Bull
Title: “Metaphorical Death and Conceptions of the Otherworld in the Twelfth-Century British Isles”

Name: Hunter Nelson
Thesis Adviser: Matthew Andrews
Title: “Distant From A Dream: Sports, Detroit, and the Decline of a Model City”

Name: Phillip Register
Thesis Adviser: Fred Naiden
Title: “Fresh Evidence: Reevaluating Alexander’s Battle at the Granicus”

2021 Honors Theses

Name: Jona Bocari
Thesis Adviser: Konrad H. Jarausch
Title: “A Resistance Twice Betrayed: Gender and Memory in the Autobiographical Accounts of Italian Partisans”

Name: Patrick Clinch
Thesis Adviser: W. Fitzhugh Brundage
Title: “The Greatest Humbug: P.T. Barnum and the Racial Politics of Nineteenth-Century Human Exhibits”

Name: Joshua Howard
Thesis Adviser: Molly Worthen
Title: “‘In the World, but Not of It’: Evangelism and Identity in the Orthodox Church in America during the Twentieth Century”

Name: Kimathi Muiruri
Thesis Adviser: Lauren Jarvis
Title: “Their City, Our Terms: The Livelihood and Political Strategies of African Migrant Labourers in Durban, KwaZulu-Natal c. 1874-1906”

Name: Svetlana Nesteruk
Thesis Adviser: Michael Tsin
Title: “Post-Colonial Philippines’ History: A Lens into the South China Sea Conflict and U.S. Regional Interests”

Name: Kasha Seltzer
Thesis Adviser: Benjamin Waterhouse
Title: “More Than Just Another Sting: Public Distrust & the Social, Political, and Institutional Consequences of ABSCAM”

Name: Sierra Winters
Thesis Adviser: James Ferguson and Samantha Buckner Terhune
Title: “Fingertips Stained in Turmeric: A Cross-Cultural Analysis of Commercialized Ayurvedic Food”

Name: Stephen Wright
Thesis Adviser: Robert M. Jenkins
Title: “From Identity, Opportunity: Political Entrepreneurs and the Beginning of the Donbass Conflict”

2020 Honors Theses

Name: Edward F. Batchelder
Thesis Adviser: Michael Morgan
Title: “The Chief Executive: Kennedy, Crisis, and Decision-Making”

Name: Mercer Brady
Thesis Adviser: Karen Hagemann
Title: “Resistance Made in Hollywood: American Movies on Nazi Germany, 1939-1945”

Name: Linda Cheng
Thesis Adviser: Michael Tsin
Title: “Breach of Trust as Fuel for Protest: Tiananmen Demonstrations and the Erosion of State-Society Relations in 1980s China”

Name: Kevin Gauch
Thesis Adviser: Harry L. Watson
Title: “The Destiny of the Slave States? The Southern Debate Over Reopening the Transatlantic Slave Trade, 1853-1861”

Name: Jacob Koehler
Thesis Adviser: Lisa Lindsay and Claude Clegg
Title: “Those Without History: Recaptured Africans, American Free Blacks, and the U.S.-Liberia Connection”

Name: Joseph Loughran
Thesis Adviser: Matthew Andrews
Title: “Stadiums of Status: Civic Development, Race, and the Business of Sports in Atlanta, Georgia, 1966-2019”

Name: Jake Sherman
Thesis Adviser: Morgan Pitelka
Title: “Reigniting the Flame: Nation-Building Through Medal Winning at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics”

Name: Claude Wilson
Thesis Adviser: Benjamin Waterhouse
Title: “Echoes of a Mill Mother’s Lament: Legacies of Labor Activism in Gastonia, North Carolina”

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