Departmental Honors

Each year the History Department invites meritorious students in their senior year to participate in the history honors program. These students choose a faculty member with whom they want to work on a research project. The project may involve original research based on primary source materials or an extensive review and evaluation of the secondary literature in a particular subject area.

Honors candidates present the project to the department in the form of a written thesis followed by an oral defense. After the defense, the department determines whether or not to grant honors upon graduation.

Over the years, history honors theses have been successfully completed on a wide range of topics, periods, and regions. Many of these theses have been revised further as peer-reviewed publications. Others have served as a springboard for alumni doing research in graduate programs.

Honors theses in the History Department represent some of the most advanced and sophisticated research undertaken by undergraduates at Lewis & Clark.

Year

Student

Thesis

2023

Frances Schlageter

Morality and Female Sexuality in the Writings of First World War VAD Nurses

2022

Jackson Gilbert

“The Best of Order Will Be Maintained:” Race, Class, and Urban Parks in New South Savannah

Ben Warner

Propaganda and Public Discourse in First World War Britain, 1914-1916

2021

Maya Winshell

“Authentic” City: Tourism, Containment, and Assimilation in San Francisco’s Downtown Ethnic Neighborhoods

2020

Sally Goldman

Bringing the War Home: The New Left in Seattle, 1967-1971

2019

Naomi Goldman-Nagel

“Counter to Conventional Wisdom”: Refugee Resettlement in the Pacific Northwest, 1975-1989

Emily Hayes-Rich

The Life and Death of the Moroccan Khettara: Premodern, Medieval, and Colonial States in Rural, Desert Communities

Azen Jaffe

An Uneven Welcome: The Impact of Declining Federal Funding on Vietnamese Refugee Resettlement in Portland, Oregon

Sophia Warner

Colonial Policy, Ethnic Identity, and the Built Environment in Japanese-Occupied Taipei, 1895-1945

2018

Samuel Bussan

“A Ganga Smoker is Never a Moral Being”: Medicine, Sex, and Cannabis in Colonial Bengal, 1890-1895

Glenna Gee-Taylor

Radical Representation: The Denver Model Cities Program, the Black Panther Party, and Revitalizing the Model Neighborhood, 1967-1971

Lauren Krumholz

National Identity and the Postwar Migration of Japanese Peruvian Enemy Aliens, 1946-1955

Aaron Schimmel

War of the Jewish Language: Hebrew and Yiddish in the Russian Empire and Soviet Union

2017

Emma Biddulph

“Competent Indians”: Land, Body, and Heteronormative Citizenship in Late 19th-century Native-American Boarding Schools

Jesse Robertson

Rajneeshpuram: Troubled Frontiers in Ecotopia

Heather Schadt

“The March of Progress”: The Displacement of Portland’s Chinese Peddlars through Urban Development, 1879-1911

Kate Wackett

Post-revolutionary Mestizo Nationalism: Migration and Exclusion on the Southern Mexican Border

2016

Caleb Diehl

Watershed Warrior: Radical Environmental Philosophies and their Role in the Opal Creek Wilderness Controversy, 1968-1996

Sten Eccles-Irwin

Mr. Johnston goes to China: A Case Study of the Mechanisms of Formal and Informal British Imperialism in Early twentieth-century China

Lindsay Mulcahy

Chasing Charles Smith: A Journey of Racial and National Ambivalence through the Imperial Borderlands

Hannah Swernoff

Building Resistance: Community-based Development in Appalachia during the War on Poverty

Julia Withers

Defiance and Americanization: Jazz in Japanese American Internment

2015

Julia Duerst

Locating Chicago’s Long Civil Rights Movement: Marion Stamps at the Epicenter

Alexander Kraemer

The Special Relationship under Strain: Anglo-American Relations at the Outbreak of the Korean War

Stanley Fonseca

“Fighting for the Right to Live”: William McClendon and the Black Freedom Struggle in Portland, Oregon, 1938-1996

Emma O’Neil

“This Life Behind a Fence”: The Story of Kimi Tambara, a Journalist in an American Concentration Camp

2014

Dana Bronson

“A Favorable Reference to the Devil”: The Portrayal of the Soviet Union on the BBC’s Home Service, 1939-1950

Anna Daggett

Stirring up the “Melting Pot”: Multiculturalism and the Rise of Dual Language Immersion Programs in Portland

David Hurlbut

“Calamities worse than the Worst Horrors of the Slave Trade”: Protestant Missionaries and Vice in Turn-of-the-Century Nigeria and China

2013

Faolán Thompson

Panic in the Rose City: Earl R. Biggs and Sexual Regulation in Cold War Portland, Oregon

Kelly Yelverton

A Home for Strangers: The Portland Hotel at the Turn of the Century

2012

Maelia DuBois

Competition, Collaboration, and Parallel Development: The Deutsch-Ostafrikanische Gesellschaft and the Imperial British East African Company in East Africa, 1884-1895

Emily Katzman

Transnational Black Power: Indigenous Australian Activism, 1920-1976

Maley Sullivan

Traitors or Martyrs? The Irish National Volunteers in War and Revolution, 1912-1921

Abigail Vining

The Legacy, Promise and Folklore Pan-American Partnership at HemisFair 1968

2011

Jenny Schell

Patriots and La Patria: José Martí and the Creation of Post-Revolutionary Cubanía

2010

Jayson Estassi

“Survey it and They will Come”: Andrew Ellicott, Scientist and Agent of Empire on the Florida Border, 1796-1800

Kali Harper

The Displacement of an Imagined People: Tourism, Biblical Romanticism, and Orientalism in Pre-Mandate Palestine, 1840-1922

Katie Liebenstein

The Roots and Consequences of Nazi Environmentalism: Construction and Destruction of the Earth and the Other

Betto van Waarden

Trials and Tribulations of Transfer: Isaac Titsingh and the Transfer of Knowledge from Japan to Europe in the Late Eighteenth Century

2009

Charles Halvorson

The Work of a Few Farmers: The Failure of the Willamette Greenway and the Divide between Environmentalists and Laborers”

Rory Sullivan

Violence, Drink and Intense Leisure: The Portrayal of Southern Highlanders in Travel Accounts, 1800-1835

2008

 

 

 

Katharine Hart

The Worth of Water: A History of the Fairmount Waterworks

Jeffrey Hayes

Multiple Nations, Multiple Nationalisms: A Study of Nationalist Ideology as Expressed in Union, Confederate and British Newspaper Editorials, 1861-3

Joseph Rice

A Dialectic of Cultural Struggle: Indigenismo, Mestizaje and Nationalism in the Murals of Diego Rivera, 1920-1940

Allison Kerr

“The Wild and the Wonderful”: Penny Dreadfuls and Victorian Social Responses

2007

 

 

 

 

 

Joseph Haker

Let Them Grow Grapes: Statewide Land Use Planning and the Rise of “Wise Use” in Oregon

Rebecca Hayes

Retelling the Apocalypse: The formation and use of sacred History in the apocalyptic eschatology of Saints Augustine and Bonaventure

Christine Miller

From Guide to Scouts: The Transfer of Girl Scouts from Great Britain to the United States

Rebecca Ortenberg

Laborers, Reformists, and “Domestic Regeneration”: The Ten Hours Movement and the Creation of the Working Class Sole Male Breadwinner

Andrew Perkins

Assimilation or Empowerment? Nazi Ideology, Elwood Towner, and Native American Identity with in the Extreme Nazi-Sympathetic Right-Wing Movement of the 1930’s

Adam Sanchez

The Terror is in the Truth: The United States vs. Dr. Marie Equi

2006

Charles Blackmar

Architects and Blueprints: Truman, Acheson and the Origins of the Vietnam War

Deanna Oothoudt

For God or Country: Latter-Day Saint Missionaries and English Protestants in Early Victorian England

Sara Almasy Porterfield

Mount Rainier National Park: An Illustration of the 19th Century American Environmental Movement

Josh Silverman

A Deal with the Devil: The Commercial Press’s Coverage of the Crimean and Boer Wars

James Tinker

Alfred Meacham: A Champion of Patience and Respect for the American Indian

2005

Amy Chesbrough

Midwives v. the Man: Midwives, the Counterculture, and the Medical Establishment in California 1974-1976

Samuel Eberhart

“A Leap of Imagination I Just Didn’t Have”: Violence in Rwanda from 1993 to 1994, and the United States’ Failure to Comprehend

Sierra Jenkins

KGST “La Mexicana” 1600 AM: Serving and Selling Latinos in the Central Valley of California

Victoria Owenius

Oregon Posten: The Importance of a Newspaper to Cultural Identity

Aili Schreiner

Lessons in Domesticity, Lives of Autonomy: The Authoritative Voices of Field Matrons, Civilizers of the Indian Service

Emily Wood

A Tenuous Alliance: Mosaddeq, Kashani, and the Fall of the Nationalist Movement in Iran

2004

Satya Byock

Incarceration and Transformation: The critical experience of prison on the moral and political growth of Mohandas Gandhi and Nelson Mandela

Bonnie Thompson

Praying Publicly and Stealing Secretly: How the Peace Policy Failed at the Malheur Indian Reservation

2003

Sarah Alexander

All’s Fair in War and Housing: The Administration of Vanport City, Oregon by the Housing Authority of Portland-1942-1948

Christopher Butt

Clear-Cut Consolidation: Dual Unionism in the Pacific Northwest Lumber Industry

Tricia Pearson

Strikers, Reformers, and Mothers: Women and the Local Story behind Muller v. Oregon

Anne Turnbull

Impossible Amalgamation: The Clash between White Workers and East Indians in St. Johns, Oregon

2002

Lisa Blee

A Fair View of the West: Looking into the Past and Future at the Portland World’s Fair

2001

Kristin Fabbe

The Debate Over the Return of Germany’s Former Colonies: Reconsidering Appeasement and Imperialism in British Politics, 1935-1939

Alysia Hayas

Music and the Popular Imagination: Chilean Protest Music, 1965-1978

Travis Littman

Admissions of Betrayal: The Trial of Rudolf Slansky

Andrew Over

Only Silence Remains: The Struggle for Celilo Falls and the Development of The Dalles Dam

Katherine Piper

The Conflict is On; the Saloon Must Go: World War One’s Effect on the Prohibition Movement

Erin Warnick

“Battle of the Last”: Wilderness, Culture, and Oil in the Artic National Wildlife Refuge

2000

Sarah Griffith

Ethnicity, Solidarity, and Tradition: A Study into the Dynamics and Complexities of the Chinese Immigrant Community in John Day, Oregon, 1860-1905

Elizabeth Loewen

Politics and Rock ‘n Roll: How Oregon Survived the Summer of 1970

Ursula Miniszewski

“Good” German Women: How the Preservation of Traditional Domestic Roles was Resistance Under Hitler

Emily Payne

A Missionary Among His People: The Story of Kanaka William, a Hawaiian Man Caught Between His Ethnicity and His Beliefs

Quinn Slobodian

Kingpins, Consuls and Labor Leaders: Division in British Columbia’s Japanese Community Before World War II

1999

Laura Benson

“The Thought is Father to the Deed” José Martí, the Cuban Émigrés of South Florida, and the Formation of the Partido Revolucionario Cubano: the Forging of a Revolution

David Kolek

The Emergence of a Public Image: Mexican Immigration to the United States

Angela Rosen

Curanderismoin South Texas, 1900-1940

Gabriel Waters

The Japanese Medieval Warrior Ethic as Presented in the Tale of the Heike

1998

Andrew Franklin

Inscribing a Place For Conservation in Geography: The Roles of the National Geographic Society and the Royal Geographical Society (of London) 1900-1905 as Viewed Through the Lenses of the National Geographicand Geographical Journal

Poincianna Horton

“Zion amid the Snows of Alaska”: Dr. Joe T. Thomas’ Campaign for Collective African American Settlement in Alaska

Raina Kiewel

Bestimmungvs. Bildung: 19th Century Prussia and the Enlightened Marriages of Karoline & Wilhelm von Humboldt and Rahel & Karl Varnhagen

Erica Peterson

“And the Desert Shall Rejoice”: The Transformation of the Great Salt Lake Valley and the Role of the Latter-day Saints

Laura Provinzino

United States vs. Mitchell: The Case of Felled Forests and Fragmented Funds for Quinault Reservation Indians

1997

E. B. Cornett

Taming the Rapids: Western Myth and Federal Development in the Cascades

Thea Martin

“That’ s All Folks”: Warner Brothers Cartoons During World War II

Timothy Orr

“More Productive than the Plains of Russia, and as Mild as Central California”: Washington Territory, Governor Isaac I. Stevens, and the Pacific Railroad Surveys of 1853-1854

David Ruderman

Petrel Under Prosecution: Dr. Marie Eui and the Espionage Act of 1917

Annalisa von Wendel

The Wolfskinder: German Refugee Children in Postwar Lithuania 1945-1997

Daniel Williams

Trial and Consequence: The Legacy of the Medoc Indians

Janelle Williams

The Path Through the Garden of Eden: the Dual Role of Paradise and Temptation in the New England Wilderness Experience

1996

Brian Costello

How They Got Their Stories: Amlin Gray, David Rabe, and Emily Mann: Provoking a New Phase in Post-Vietnam War Consciousness

Erin Dunn

Beadwork from the Columbia Plateau: Tools to Interpreting the Past (An Analysis of Eleven Beaded Flat Bags)

Robin Green

Christianity, the Civilizing Mission, and Sisterhood: The Medical Work of British Women in Colonial India

Mie Kennedy

Challenging Public Consciousness:
Japanese Official Textbook History and Emerging Okinawan Memory

1995

Joseph King

De causa Dei contra Pelagium:Martin Luther and the Order of St. Augustine

Michael Nasif

Conquest and Conversion in New Spain: Profiles of the Spanish Pursuit of Just Relations with the Indians, 1492-1550

Gregory Parrington

The Spanish Inquisition: Royal Control and Ethnic Hatred in Early Modern Spain

Sarah Starnes

God, Motherhood and Apple Pie: Red Cross Recreation Workers in Vietnam

1994

Danielle Culpepper

The Jews of Italy and the Racial Laws of 1938: Origins and Explanations of Italian anti-Semitic Legislation

Sydne Didier

“Just like it was your own baby”: An Analysis of Rhetoric, Imagery and the American Psyche During Operation Babylift

1993

Winfred Hutabarat

From Colonial Apologetic to Autonomy: Developments in Modern Indonesian Historiography

Janet Miller

Sending Only of Her Best: The Aims and Objects of Women’s Emigration to South Africa, 1894-1907

1992

Wenonah Elms

The South Carolina Sea Islands: A Nineteenth Century Experiment in Race and Gender

Paul McFarlane

Cowlitz Prairie: The Transformation of a Community

Stephen Ryan

Michel Foucault: History Under Siege

1991

Ann Sawyer

The Everett Massacre: A Case Study of the Relationship Between the Social Gospel and the Labor Movement

Mary Wheeler

The Narrative of Donald Niven Wheeler: An American Communist

1990

James Blakemore

Building an Empire: John C. Ainsworth and the Oregon Steam Navigation Company

Stuart Cole

Peace Settlement: The Imperial Vision Revealed in Early British Natal, 1843-1847

Ian Gee

The Walla Walla Treaty Council of 1855: A Critical Analysis of the Rhetoric of Stevens and Palmer

1989

Elizabeth Ann Prato

Fin-de-siecle Sexologists: Writings on Female Sexuality

Sally Strand

Imperial Motherhood

Jennifer Lee Trager

Zhenskii Vestrik: The Russian Women’s Messenger, 1904-1917

1988

Kira Hilden

Elizabeth Duffield’s Diaries, 1919-1927: A Young Woman in the 1920s: Conflicts in her Public and Private Worlds

Barbara Norman

Morality, Reform, and Influence: How to Choose a Trustworthy Spouse in the Nineteenth Century

Kim Swanson

An Indissoluble Vision of Community: Social Continuity and Change After the Dissolution of the Aurora Colony

W. Alan Yost

A Demographic and Economic Analysis of The Dalles, Oregon, from 1850-1900

1986

Sheri Bartlett

The Diary of Esther Belle McMillan Hanna: A Pioneer Woman on the Oregon Trail, 1982

Robert Mink

“So Long as We Still Live”: The Oral Tradition and Polish History

Benjamin Scully

The British Arabists

1985

Eric Engstrom

Peter Altenberg: A Genius Without Faculties

Andrew Slater

Nowhere to March: Problems of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament

1984

Margot Carter

All you have to do is ask: An Oral History of Ten Oregon Women Vietnam Veterans

1983

Leigh Deborah Horiuchi

Francis Fuller Victor: A Woman Historian of the Northwest

1982

Christopher Friday

Silent Sojourn: The Chinese Along the Lower Columbia River 1870-1900

Douglas Greene

Civil Rights and Public School Desegregation, Dallas, Texas: A Case Study

1980

Bradley Figal

The Portland State University Strike of May 1970: A Historical Analysis of Student Dissidence and Social Response

1978

Jan Connell

Jottings of Journeys in the Pacific Northwest: Abigail Scott Duniways’ “Editorial Correspondence”

Paul Shore

Marcus Aurelius: Philosopher and Ruler