Senior Honors Colloquium

Honors Colloquium to Show Disease, Witchcraft, Murder
by Dyne Suh and Nate Gelman, excerpted from Historia, May 2012

From televangelists to venereal disease, dictators to witchs’ teats, 15 seminarians tested the full powers of their creativity and skill to compose theses examining a wide array of edgy paper topics stretching from antiquity to the Middle
Ages, and on through the 19th century to the present.

The students will present their research in the annual Department Honors Colloquium,
on Friday, May 25, in the History Conference Room, HSSB 4020, beginning at 9 a.m.
The public, including especially all alumni and friends, is welcome!

Struggling to compose original pieces of scholarship ranging from 35 to over a hundred
pages, this cadre of seminarians provided invaluable advice to one another as they
grappled with alchemies to turn primary and secondary sources into scholastic gold. The
topics were wildly diverse, but a mutual love of history, a fascination with controversial
aspects of human experiences and narratives of redemption and the triumph of justice,
along with the help of delicious seminar snacks forged strong friendships and a sense of
community amongst all the people involved in this seminar.

The papers accomplished over the past two quarters, with the generous support of
advising professors and Undergraduate Research and Creative Activities (URCA) grants
are as follows:

• Lauren Carpenter (Humphreys), “Hidden in Plain Sight: A Decade of Non-Traditional Activism by Egyptian Youth Before the Arab Spring.”
  
• Molly E. Contreras (Jacobson), “Reclaiming Eros: Gender Transgression, Obscenity, and One Woman’s Quest for Sexual Liberation.”
  
• Jim Davies (Lansing), “Vengeance and Remembrance: The Role of Florentine Family Memoirs in Vendetta Culture.”
  
• Nate Gelman (Lichtenstein), “Of Gods and Gold: “Televangelism and the Rise of Supply Side Economics During the Reagan Era.”
  
• Dana Hughes (Lansing). “Personal Purification and Group Identity in Late Medieval Italian Confraternities.”
  
• Elizabeth G. Jimenez (Soto Laveaga), “Making Marital Equality and Freedom in the United States.”
  
• Kevin King (Dutra), “Eis a democracia podre: the Charles Elbrick Kidnapping Revisited.”
  
• Michael Masket (Majewski), “Government’s Role in the Transportation Revolution: A Case Study of the Pennsylvania Canal.”
  
• Kevin McGill (Digeser), “A Romance of Three Kingdoms: Carthage, Numidia, Rome and the Causes of the Third Punic War.”
  
• Chelsea McTigue (Digeser), “Republic to Republic: The Influence of the Roman Republic on the Founding of the U.S. Constitution.”
  
• Ross Melczer (Chikowero), “The Revolution that Incited Chimurenga (The Fast Track Land Reform in Zimbabwe, 1997-2000).”
  
• Lia Schallert (Soto Laveaga), “Venereal Disease and the Evolution of Public Health Care in San Francisco, 1850- 1930.”
  
• Dyne Suh (Spickard), “Between Traitors and Survivors: Pro-Japanese Collaborators, Comfort Women and Gender- Restricted Assimilation Opportunities in Colonial Korea During WWII.”
  
• Paul Thies (Plane), “To Inspect the Unexpected: The Social Emasculation of the Colonial Male Witch with Animal Familiars.”
  
• Harrison E. Weber (Lichtenstein), “A Covenant Undone: Understanding the 1960 Master Plan for Higher Education in California in Light of 1993 Realities.”

hm 5/21/12