History Undergraduate Senior Theses Defended

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* Click here to view archived senior thesis papers

2011 Spring

• Ede Bundity              
  From Horthy to Ra’kosi: Political Anti-Semitism under Fascism and Communism
  Advisor: David Sorkin
• Chris Callahan            
  China and Congo: A Relationship of Equals?
  Advisor: Florence Bernault
• Carissa Carroll
  ‘Like Sons of Immortal Spain’: An examination of motivations for American volunteers in the Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939
  Advisor: Laird Boswell
• Sean Crocker              
  How the Vietnam War Changed Air Power Thinking
  Advisor: John Hall
• Catherine Diao           
  The Heren XVII: Dutch East India Company Management in the 17th century
  Advisor: Lee Wandel
• Natasha Dockter        
  Searching for Home: The Role of Place in the Life of Simon Dubnow
  Advisor: David Sorkin
• Jeff Eversman            
  Germany’s ‘Political Power Factor’: Tirpitz, the Second Navy Law, and the Genesis of an Anti-British Fleet
  Advisor: Jeremi Suri
• Diana Haidar              
  Assyrian Iron Working Technology and Civilization
  Advisor: Marc Kleijwegt
• Jenni Hedeman          
  Protest and Violence: A Comparative Study of the 1965 Teach-In and the 1967 Dow Chemical Company Protest at UW-Madison
  Advisor: Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen
• Matthew Hoadley      
  The Anglo-Saxon Inheritance: Legal Continuity in England after the Norman Invasion of 1066
  Advisor: Karl Shoemaker
• Robert Howard          
  How Playboy and Castro Helped Redefine 1950s American Masculinity
  Advisor: Cindy Cheng
• Jake Israel                  
  British Multiculturalism: A Study of Integration Policy in the Context of Muslim Immigration & Post-War Minority Relations
  Advisor: Laird Boswell
• Jordan Kook              
  Claudius Redefined
  Advisor: Marc Kleijwegt
• Maura Kudronowicz  
  The Goddess Isis and the Appeal of Suffering in the Greco-Roman World
  Advisor: Marc Kleijwegt
• Will Marx                   
  Francophone Reactions to Defeat at Nicopolis, 1396 CE
  Advisor: Karl Shoemaker
• Ryan Panzer               
  Defying Secularization: Protestant Political Theology and Church Relevance in Post-WWII Germany
  Advisor: Rudy Koshar
• Laura Stewart            
  Crime and Settlement: Extra-Judicial Dispute Resolution in Medieval England
  Advisor: Karl Shoemaker
• Leila Walker               
  Monarchical Identity in Early Modern Britain and its Role in the Development of English Nationalism
  Advisor: Johann Sommerville

2010 Fall

• Robin Bates
  Gendered Justice: Women on Trial During the French Revolution
  Advisor: Prof. Desan
• Kristen Cassarini
  West Point in War: The Influence of Antebellum USMA Curriculum on the Use of Hard War
  Advisor: Prof. Hall
• Daniel Cohen
  Rejecting Eugenics: Franz Boas and the American Jewish Committee, 1906-1935
  Advisor: Prof. Sorkin
• Jacob Jurss
  Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker's Movement: Personalsim and the Seamen Strike of 1936
  Advisor: Prof. Jones
• Gerald Kapinos
  Enemy Prisoners of Wisconsin: A Comparative Study of the German and Japanese POW Systems
  Advisor: Prof. Hall
• David Morris
  How the U.S. lost Iran: Washington's Destabilization of the Shah's Regime in the 1960's
  Advisor: Prof. Suri
• Yongqing Douglas Yang
  The Panamanian Paradox: A President’s Struggle to Remove Manuel Noriega
  Advisor: Prof. Suri

2010 Spring

• Paul Axel
  The Evil You Know: How China’s Nuclear Ambitions Changed the Cold War and the World
  Advisor: Jeremi Suri
• Adam Breihan
  Triumphant Insurgency: Meyer Adelman and the Emergence of Wisconsin SWOC
  Advisor: William Jones
• Anthony Canales
  Sinking Hope, The Virtuous One, And The Developing Letter:The Struggle for U.S. Neutrality during the First World War
  Advisor: John Cooper
• Kelly Creech
  The American Occupation: The Early Years: A Tale of Two Leaders
  Advisor: Jeremi Suri
• Sarah Dowd
  Tensions in Tory Ideology: 1685-1690
  Advisor: Johann Sommerville
• Madeleine Dungy
  French Farm Unions and the Political and Ideological Foundations of the Common Agricultural Policy
  Advisor: Laird Boswell
• Alexandria Dziamski
  City Poles: The Building Blocks that Created and Supported Chicago’s Polish Triangle
  Advisor: Tom Archdeacon
• Nikita Ernst
  Haole Historians: How the First Writers Transformed the History of Polynesia
  Advisor: John Sharpless
• Jack Garigliano
  A Question of Authority: Class Consciousness and Scientific Expertise in Wisconsin Agriculture, 1878-1890
  Advisor: John Sharpless
• Joshua Hartman
  Evaluating the Ideal: Roman Influence on Chivalric Ethos
  Advisor: Marc Kleijwegt
  Saad Jaka Bhutto and the Bomb
  Advisor: Jeremi Suri
• Andrew Myszewski
  Responsible Riches: The Intellectual Development of Corporate Social Responsibility, 1920-1960
  Advisor: Colleen Dunlavy
• Andrew O’Connor
  The Shifting Shape of al-Qahira: The Question of Change and Continuity in High Medieval Egypt Through the Evidence of Urban Form in Cairo
  Advisor: Michael Chamberlain
• Mark Otto
  Machiavelli’s Influence on Republican Theory in Early Stuart England
  Advisor: Johann Sommerville
• Nicole Powers
  Contested Rosies: Portrayals of Women Workers in World War II Magazines 
  Advisor: Nan Enstad
• Neil Sharma
  Mamluk Studies: A State of the Art
  Advisor: Michael Chamberlain
• Kate Siberine
  Publishers of Truth: The Inner Light and Quaker Autobiography 
  Advisor: William Reese
• Alex Truong
  Ticklers and Songwriters: American Acculturation in the Harlem Renaissance
  Advisor: Nan Enstad
• Kevin Vrevich
  Federalist Death Nail: A Reanalysis of the Demise of the Federalist Party
  Advisor: Jean Lee

2009

• Matthew Costello
  Early American Intelligence: Race and Gender Tactics in the American Revolution
  Advisor: Jean Lee
• Staci Duros
  Unnatural Parents: Parent-Child Relationships in the Roman World
  Advisor: Marc Kleijwegt
• Sarah Klentz
  The Education of John Quincy Adams
  Advisor: Bill Reese
• Laura McCabe
  Pope Pius and the Catholic church in WWII: Communications to the World and Direct Actions in Italy
  Advisor: Rudy Koshar
• Arlen McCann
  Short-Lived Correspondence: Gamal Abdel Nasser and John F. Kennedy
  Advisor: Jeremi Suri
• Peter McGarraugh
  The Scholar, the Poet and the Technocrat: Cuban and Filipino Nationalism and the Formation of American Colonial Policy
  Advisor: Francisco Scarano
• Monica Meyer
  Indecision 1655: The Debate Surrounding the Readmission of Jews to England
  Advisor: Johann Sommerville
• Lindsay Miller
  Contributions of the Postal Service to Victory in the American Revolution
  Advisor: Jean Lee
• Andrew Myszewski
  Responsible Riches: A History of Corporate Social Responsibility in the United States, 1918-1968
  Advisor: Colleen Dunlavy
• Robb Nelson
  Radical Democracy in the Midwest: The Formation of the Minnesota Farmer-Labor Party
  Advisor: Camille Guérin-Gonzales
• Evan Nordgren
  Broken Treaties: The Impact of Land Use Change in Sawyer  County, Wisconsin on the Lac Courte Oreilles Ojibwe
  Advisor: Susan Johnson
• Daniel Rebholz
  Be a Person of Today: The Selling of ‘Modernity’ in Early Postcolonial Kenyan Newspaper Advertisements
  Advisor: Neil Kodesh
• James Reuter
  Rendering Unto Caesar: The Catholic Church and its Confrontation with German National Socialism
  Advisor: Rudy Koshar
• Stephanie Sokolowski
  Charles Wilson Peale: A Revolutionary Marketer
  Advisor: Jean Lee
• William Thomson
  The Making of the Writ of Liberty: Habeas Corpus, 1200-1628
  Advisor: Johann Sommerville
• Lance Vest
  The 1830 Trial of Chief Oshkosh and the Career of James Doty
  Advisor: Ned Blackhawk

2008

• Michael Albrecht
  Spectre of Sedition: The Okhrana, the Cheka, and Suppression as a Means of Bolshevik Statecraft
  Advisor: David McDonald
• Taylor Anvid
  Prostitutes, Pomegranates, and Patriarchy: The Role of Contraceptives and Abortifacients in Sixth-Century Byzantine Society
  Advisor: John Scarborough
• Carolyn Arena
  The Hat Act of 1732: American Manufacture and International Competition in Atlantic Markets
  Advisor: John Sharpless
• Kerry Bryan
  No Sick Call for the Negro: How Segregation in the United States Army Negatively Affected African American Soldiers’ Health During World War II
  Advisor: William Van DeBurg
• Kristin Czubkowski
  Wrong Place, Wrong Time: Central-American Asylum-Seekers in the Post-Refugee Act Era
  Advisor: Thomas Archdeacon
• Benjamin Emmrich
  Livian Emphasis: The Role of Roman Moral Values in the Ab Urbe Condita
  Advisor: Marc Kleijwegt
• Marissa Floyd
  The Growth of Hamas: An Examination of the Sociopolitical Conditions of the Occupied Territories in the 1980s
  Advisor: Samer Alatout
• Alex Gagnon
  The Paris Agreement: The Diplomatic Joust Between Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho
  Advisor: Jeremi Suri
• William Glassman
  Royalism, Resistance and Religion in Restoration Scotland: 1660-1688
  Advisor: Johann Sommerville
• Jason Heinen
  The Federalism Argument in Civil War Wisconsin: How the State Rights Doctrine Was Debated and Used Between 1854 and 1864
  Advisor: John Sharpless
• Matthew Ho
  Chinese Students in America: The Post-Tiananmen Square Campaign of Intimidation
  Advisor: Jeremi Suri
• Lisa Hodkiewicz
  Breaking the Norms: Women and the Modern Olympic Games of Pierre de Coubertin
  Advisor: Laird Boswell
• Justin King
  Partners and Rivals: Political Economy and American Diplomacy, 1969-1974
  Advisor: Jeremi Suri
• Thomas Kivi
  Montaigne, Descartes, and the Malleable Augustine
  Advisor: Lee Wandel
• Alex Leites
  Myth and Restoration in the Axial Age: How Writers in Ancient China, Greece and Israel Preserved Oral Teachings through Sociopolitical Decline
  Advisor: Marc Kleijwegt
• Peter Lund
  Beyond Mantinea: The Theban Tactical Revolution and the Epaminondas Tradition
  Advisor: Marc Kleijwegt
• Mike Malone
  Reconceptualizing the Roman Soldier: Social Movement in the Late Republican Army as the Foundation for the Roman Revolution
  Advisor: Marc Kleijwegt
• Benjamin McCready
  From Factories to Fields: The Rise and Fall of Whitewater, WI, 1837-1900
  Advisor: Colleen Dunlavy
• Jaclyn Mich
  I Was a Suburbanite for the FBI: How the Postwar G-Man Fought Communism in Popular Culture
  Advisor: John Sharpless
• Matthew Niemet
  No Place Left for Byzantium: Diplomatic Urgency during the Reign of Emperor Manuel II Palaeologus (AD 1391-1413)
  Advisor: Michael Chamberlain
• Caitlyn Pisarski
  The Plight of Legal Immigrants: Resistance and Resilience after the 1996 Welfare Reform
  Advisor: Thomas Archdeacon
• Yolanda Purdy
  A Boat for the Lwa
  Advisor: James Sweet
• Corey Sheahan
  Byzantium in the early years of Alexius: From Crisis to Stability
  Advisor: Marc Kleijwegt
• Pavel Sternberg
  Separating Apartheid: The Division Between Rhetoric and Action Toward Apartheid South Africa in the Kennedy Administration
  Advisor: Jeremi Suri
• Jesse Zarley
  Settling the Mapuche Question: Concessionary Colonization in Chile, 1900-1912
  Advisor: Florencia Mallon
• Lisbeth Zeggane
  Beyond Barbed Wires: The Deterioration of the Japanese American Family
  Advisor: Jeremi Suri

2007

• Talal Al-Rashoud
  Democracy in the Writings of the Ideologues of the Muslim Brotherhood
  Advisor: Michael Chamberlain
• Sandra Brasda
  Joseph McCarthy and the Wisconsin Republican Party, 1946-1954
  Advisor: John Cooper
• Joel Feingold
  Red (White and Blue): Communism, Finnishness, and America in the Upper Midwest, 1907-1940
  Advisor: Tony Michels
• Meryl Hoeft
  Cultural Critics and Reformers: Refining the Greek Ideal in German Education, 1870 – 1914
  Advisor: Rudy Koshar
• Michael Johnson
  Douglas MacArthur and the Fall of the Philippines, 1941-1944
  Advisor: John Cooper
• Jason Karnosky
  Nikita S. Khrushchev Visits America, September 1959:  Analyzing Khrushchev’s Time in America, and the Attempt to use Personal Diplomacy to Overcome Cold War Ideological Differences
  Advisor: Francine Hirsch
• Dan Katz
  The My Lai Massacre: Psychological Effects of Guerilla Warfare
  Advisor: John Cooper
• Patrick Kelly
  Of Pawns and Players: U.S.-British Politics vis-à-vis Jewish Refugess, 1945-1948
  Advisor: Thomas Archdeacon
• Katrina Kobor
  Transnational Rights Struggles: Aboriginal Australians and the Influence of African-American Movements, 1925-1972
  Advisor: Warwick Anderson
• John Koczela
  Behold the Man: The Western Search for Muhammad in the “Clear Light of History”
  Advisor: Michael Chamberlain
• Lee Kujava
  British Euroskepticism during the Membership Application Process for the European Community, 1969-1975
  Advisor: Jonathan Zeitlin
• Rich Langweber
  “The Sanction of Law:” The Supreme Court and Civil Rights from Plessy to Brown
  Advisor: John Cooper
• Brenna Miller
   ‘Justice for Djilas’: The New York Times, Milovan Djilas, and the Fight for Free Speech, Human Rights, and Legality in Yugoslavia
  Advisor: Francine Hirsch
• Chandra Oroszváry
  African-American Mortality in Philadelphia's Eastern State Penitentiary
  Advisor: Steve Kantrowitz
• Eli Persky
  The Commercialization of Political Control & The Militarization of Commerce
  US Military Contracting After the Cold War
  Advisor: John Sharpless
• Liana Prescott
  To Create a New Japan: ‘National Essence’ and the Critique of Modernity, 1880-1937
  Advisor: Louise Young
• Emily Schmitt
  Rediscovering My Odyssey: An Analysis of One Creole’s Identity during the Haitian Revolution
  Advisor: Suzanne Desan
• Ann Slabosky
  COYOTE Tricksters: Humor and a New Discourse on Sex Worker Identity San Francisco 1972-1990
  Advisor: Nan Enstad
• Matthew Tallant
  They Washed Their Hands in the Sea: Origins of the Roman Navy
  Advisor: Marc Kleijwegt
• Russell Thompson
  Russia, the Jews, and National Policy in the Nineteenth Century
  Advisor: David McDonald
• Steven von Horn
  Re-conceptualizing Liberia: The Formative Period of 1800-1847
  Advisor: Neil Kodesh
• Steven M. Weber
  ‘Fighting Bob’ Stops Fighting: Senator Robert M. La Follette, Dissent, and Patriotism
  During World War I
  Advisor: John Cooper
• Jonathan Wu
  Gaining and Relinquishing the Text: Reading, Writing and Shaka
  Advisor: Neil Kodesh
• Emily Young
  The Politicization of Lebanese Shiites:  1943-1995
  Advisor: Michael Chamberlain

2006

• Mei-Ling Anderson
  Situationism in May 1968
  Advisor: Laird Boswell
• Carolyn Averill
  From Remembrance to Conscience: A Study of the Goals of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum
  Advisor: Rudy Koshar
• Quilen Blackwell
  Neighborhood Power: Neighborhood Organizing and Business Relations in the United States between 1940 and 1970
  Advisor: Colleen Dunlavy
• Joey Cienian
  Untitled
  Advisor: Jeremi Suri
• Benjamin Dahl
  Help or Hindrance: The Role of Violence in the 1960s Student Movement in West Berlin
  Advisor: Rudy Koshar
• Daniel Deacon
  The Art of Law: Artificial Reason and Equity in Seventeenth Century English Legal Theory
  Advisor: Johann Sommerville
• Adam Diederich
  The Origins, Rise, and Transition of Conservative Ideas in American Politics: A Study of National Review Conservatism from 1955-1988
  Advisor: Jeremi Suri
• Emily Fransee
  Victim to Executioner: French Torture and Response during the Algerian Revolution
  Advisor: Lou Roberts
• Shauna Fitzmahan
  The Sixties Generation: Skepticism in Soviet Ukraine
  Advisor: Jeremi Suri
• Simon Ford
  Creating the East: Antioch and the Empire, 195-347
  Advisor: Marc Kleijwegt
• Eric Gifford
  The Unionization of Technicians during the French Popular Front, 1934-1938
  Advisor: Laird Boswell
• Dan Hudson
  Saffron in the Mediterranean World
  Advisor: Marc Kleijwegt
• Annie Kahn
  Supporting Reconstruction: Rebuilding Atlanta, 1864-1872
  Advisor: Colleen Dunlavy
• Trevor Leverson
  The Economic Impact of the ‘Holy Man’ in Byzantium 300-600 C.E.
  Advisor: Paul Stephenson
• Trevor Owens
  A Child’s Eye View of Life as a Scientist: Science, Society and Gender in the History of Children’s Biographies of Marie Curie and Albert Einstein
  Advisor: History of Science
• Mike Pangborn
  Wounded Soldier, Disabled Veteran
  Advisor: Thomas Archdeacon
• Joseph Richie
  Unintended Culture Clash: Temperance Motivations and the Resistance to Prohibition in Wisconsin, 1905-1920
  Advisor: John Cooper
• Jason Rozumalski
  Vegetable Politick: Enlightenment and English Rural Life
  Advisor: Jean Lee
• Michelle Wagner
  Six Day War: Questioning Israel’s Use of Force
  Advisor: Michael Chamberlain