History Undergraduate Senior Theses Defended

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2016

  • Khalid Abdl-haleem
    “’Tyranny of the weak:’ Eisenhower, the Arab, and the Suez Crisis”
    Advisor: John Hall
  • Andrew Bartch
    “The Romanization of Britain: acculturation and its effects on Celtic society
    Advisor: Marc Kleijwegt
  • Kevin Dlugos
    “Stuck on the sidelines: a history of cheerleading labor in the National Football League”
    Advisor: Sean Dinces
  • Riley Sexton
    “Counterinsurgency and genocide in Guatemala: reverberations of Vietnam”
    Advisor: Florencia Mallon
  • Claire Steffen
    “The white man’s burden: British oppression during the decolonization of Kenya”
    Advisor: Daniel Ussishkin
  • Eva Tao
    “Embracing the misunderstood world: early-modern European imaginations of China”
    Advisor: Johann Somerville
  • Shuang Wu
    “Growing up in the occupied Heimat: German Youths and American GIs, 1946-1956”
    Advisor: Mary Louise Roberts
  • Dan Tagliarini
    “The Goldwater-Nichols Act: Creating an Uncertain Future for Civil-Military Relations”
    Advisor: John Hall

2015

  • Teo Diaconesco
    Jokes and Networks: Everyday Resistance in Nicolae Ceausescu’s Romania
    Advisor: Kathryn Ciancia
  • Peter Geppert
    The Dean of Chastity: An Enforcement History of the NCAA
    Advisor: Sean Dinces
  • Ryan Gesme
    Schleswig-Holstein: A Conflict in Nationalism
    Advisor: Rudy Koshar
  • Leah Hans
    Clash of Popes and Kings: The Development of Papal Authority in the Eleventh Century
    Advisor: Leonora Neville
  • Theodore Heckel
    Unfamiliar Road, Familiar Roadmap
    Advisor: John Sharpless
  • Max Lykins
    A constructivist reading of Livy
    Advisor: Marc Kleiwegt
  • Matt McElroy
    Barth and Bonhoeffer: religious opposition to Nazism
    Advisor: Rudy Koshar
  • David Meyerson
    Unlikely Coalition: How Blacks and Whites Organized to Dismantle the Racist Housing Market in Oak Park, Illinois
    Advisor: John Sharpless
  • Abigail Miller
    Congress vs. Veterans’ Organizations on the Medical Care of Veterans
    Advisor: John Sharpless
  • John Rizner
    Supermen on the Silver Screen: Nietzschean thought and postwar memory in Stanley Kubrick’s unmade “Napoleon”
    Advisor: Suzanne Desan
  • Julia Robles
    Vietnamese Buddhist Activism and U.S. Foreign Policy, 1963-1966
    Advisor: John Sharpless
  • Milada Vannarath
    Changes in Lao Buddhist Rituals due to Migration
    Advisor: Michael Cullinane
  • Haochen Wang
    A Spectacle of Good and Bad: British Press on Germany, 1870-1914
    Advisor: Daniel Ussishkin
  • Chenguang Zhu
    The Raj in the Imperial Metropolis: Display of India in Expositions and Museums of Victorian London
    Advisor: Daniel Ussishkin

2014

  • Jamie Botter
    An Accepted Difference: The Marvel Comics Concept and American Culture, 1950-1975)
    Advisor: Cindy Cheng
  • Corina Cheng
    Beyond the Fog of Silence
    Advisor: Judd Kinzley
  • Alex Craver
    The Soviets Go Shopping
    Advisor: Francine Hirsch
  • Jonathon Davies
    Victorian Patent Abolitionism
    Advisor: Daniel Ussishkin
  • Liyao Lu
    Unignorable pressure with inconsistency–US impact on Taiwanese democratization in the era of Chiang Chin-kuo
    Advisor: Judd Kinzley
  • Laura Luo
    Vanishing Mountains: A History of the Ceramic Industry in Jiajiang, China
    Advisor: Judd Kinzley
  • Gretchen Miron
    Seneca’s Epistle 47: An Instructional Attempt for Improved Treatment of Slaves in the Roman Institution of Slavery
    Advisor: Marc Kleijwegt
  • Megan Ness
    Children at Work: Childhood Labor in the Ancient Greek World
    Advisor: Claire Taylor
  • Michael Podgers
    Berlin Means Boys: The Queer Topography of Berlin
    Advisor: Rudy Koshar
  • Amanda Roush
    Ulpian: The Legal Voice of Human Rights in Ancient Rome
    Advisor: Marc Kleijwegt
  • Robert Sass
    From Monarchy to Republic and Back: England the Anglo-Dutch Wars
    Advisor: Johann Sommerville
  • Claire Siedow
    The Queen Caroline Affair
    Advisor: Daniel Ussishkin
  • Ben Siegel
    The Congressman’s Novel and the Evolution of Northern Opposition in the Civil War
    Advisor: Steve Kantrowitz
  • John Wendt
    The Second Way of War: Genteel Honor, Martial Glory, and Frustration in the Antebellum Officer Corps, along the American Frontier
    Advisor: John Hall
  • Greg Yax
    Ivan Kireevsky and the Peasant Commune
    Advisor: David McDonald

2013

  • Joseph Fitzgibbon
    We’re Number One”: The Summit Series of 1972 and Canadian Identity
    Advisor: David McDonald
  • Chelsey Wilson
    Servilia and Atia: The Role of Maternal Power in Late Republican Rome
    Advisor: Marc Kleijwegt

2011

  • 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

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

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