History Honors Seminar Colloquium

Here you can view the program with the thesis titles, and some of the presentation powerpoints.

Each year about a dozen of the best History students at UCSB participate in a two-quarter Honors Seminar course that culminates in the oral presentation of the students’ research projects. Here is a list of the 2010 theses, with links to three of the powerpoint presentations prepared by the authors. The 2010 seminar was directed by Prof. Hilary Bernstein.

See this list of UCSB History Senior Honors Theses.

Department of History Senior Honors Colloquium
Friday, 21 May 2010

Session I (9-10:30 a.m): Literature and Politics in Italy and America

  • Christy Mason, “Valuing Virtue: Nineteenth-Century Sexuality and the Act of Seduction, 1818-1860” (Cohen)
  • Eleanor Dickson, “Uncivilized and Idealized: Depictions of the Southern Italian Peasant in the Fascist Period”
    (Fogu and Rappaport)
  • Philomen Leonelli, “Petrarchan Humor: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Irony” (Lansing) (5 page pdf of lecture notes)

Session II (11 a.m.-12:30 p.m.): War, Diplomacy, and Their Effects

  • Joshua Madison, “Perspectives on James II and the Emergence of Jacobitism in Ireland” (McGee)
  • Rheannon Maxwell, “A House of Cards: U.S. State Department Policy in Nicaragua,1909-1928” (Dutra)
  • Andrew Alvarado, “‘The Best Little Army In Asia:’ KMAG, the ROK Army, and the Failure of American Policy in Korea” (Talbott)

Session III (1:30-3:30 p.m.): U.S. Politics: Domestic and Foreign Influences

  • Mackenzie Weinger, “Have You Any News? How America’s First Embedded Journalists Envisioned the United States, 1846-1848” (Cohen) (pdf of powerpoint)
    A press release distributed by the local news aggregator edhat.com offers this summary of Mackenzie’s thesis:
    “In her research, Weinger discovered how America’s first journalists both reported about the Mexican-American War and helped fashion American nationalism by stressing expansionism, unity, and progress. Her senior thesis, titled ‘Have You Any News?’ How America’s First Embedded Journalists Envisioned the United States, 1846-48, makes original contributions to the history of the war, the history of journalism, and the Civil War Era.”
  • Mitchell Stewart, “Black Radicalism, the Communist Party, and the Struggle to Liberate Haiti from American Imperialism, 1918-1930” (Yaqub)
  • Catherine Kwon, “‘Seeds of the Contemporary New Right:’ California Young Americans for Freedom, 1964-1980” (Kalman)
  • Shauna Woods, “Henry Spira and the SHAC 7: Comparing Animal Rights Activism in 1976 and 2006” (Kalman)
    (pdf of powerpoint, includes abstract)

hm 6/1/10, 8/30/10, 7/30/14