The Stuart L. Bernath Prize is awarded to the History undergraduate whose research paper is selected by the History Prizes Committee as the best paper produced in a one-quarter course. The winner will also have their research published in The UC Santa Barbara Undergraduate Journal of History.
Present and previous recipients:
(prizes prior to 1990 were administered by the History department)
2023
Elayna Maquinales
2022
Madeline Josa and Samuel Ricci
- Josa, M. (2022). “The Original Power Suit: Fashion as a Tool of Political Agency in the Early Modern Period.” (2022 Bernath Prize Winner). The UC Santa Barbara Undergraduate Journal of History, 2(2).
- Ricci, S. (2022). “Culture of Captivity: Piracy, Slavery, and Cultural Contact in the Mediterranean.” (2022 Bernath Prize Winner). The UC Santa Barbara Undergraduate Journal of History, 2(2).
2021
Zhen Tian
2020
Jody Chen
2019
Dylan Kish, “The Theatrics of Women: Female Voices in Seventeenth-Century English Comedy”
2018
Hailey Hoyt, “Dirty Laundry: Starving in the Church”
2017
Elizabeth Schmitt, “Emmet Till, Khaled Said, and Civil Rights in the U.S. and Egypt.”
2016
Clayton Hjulbert, “Supply-Side Economics: the ‘Right’ Path to Victory”
Niklas Port, “The Voices on the Scaffold: Executions in Seventeenth-Century England”
2015
Geneva Douma, “The Executive and Employment Opportunity: The Reagan Administration’s Battle of 1986.”
2014
Matthew McDonald, “Communist Paranoia and the American Public’s Effect on the Thermonuclear Debate.”
2013
Jacob Owens, “The Conscience of a Communist: Imre Nagy’s Revolutionary Policy of 1956.”
2012
Kelsey F. O’Hagan, “The Hitler Youth Experience: Putting a Human Face on the Girls of the Jüngmadel
and the Bund Deutscher Mädel.”
Nicole M. Evashenk, “Medically Inducing Conformity in 20th Century America.”
2011
Jacqueline Louise Tolsen, “Don’t Cry for Me, Henry Kissinger: The United States’ Role in Argentina’s Dirty War.”
2010
Leonard Shonka, “A War of Stubbornness: A Look at the Different Perspectives of the ‘Puritan Martyrs’
& Archbishop William Laud Regarding the English Church and State”
Travis Van Ligten, “A Strong Start: How the Jesuits Converted a Nation”
2009
Michael Daly, “No Casa to Call Home: Mexican Industrial Workers in 1920s Chicago”
2008
Agnieszka Matysiak: “Rabi’a Through the Eyes of Scholars”
2007
Aubrey L. Boag: “They Expected the Worst, They Did Not Expect the Unthinkable: Jewish Emigration from Germany, 1933-41”
David Wight: “Malick Sow Meets Jim Crow: African Diplomats, Route 40, the State Department, and Civil Rights, 1961-64”
2006
Rachel Binning: “I Remember: The Shoah Foundation’s Attempt to Address Poland’s Complicated Past”
Alexandra Alicia Beaton
2005
Jason Scott Shattuck: “Smoking Altar, Burning Bull: Antioch’s Opposition to Julian’s Sacrifices”
2004
Thomas Flowers: “Rhetorical Allegiance: the 1606 English Oath of Allegiance Controversy”
2003
Nelson Richards: “The Grand Puppeteer: Tacitus’s Use of Historical Figures as Rhetorical Tools in The Annals”
2002
Courtney Salera: “Kristallnacht: What Makes Us Remember?”
2001
Michelle Hill “If You Want My Body You Must Pay For It: Prostitutes on Prostitution in the Mid-Nineteenth Century”
2000
Jill Cramer: “Beautiful as Well as Brave” British Women and Appearance in World War II”
1999
Jennifer Atkinson: “Storm Clouds in the West: The Battle between Free Labor and Slavery in Missouri – 1819-20”
1998
Timothy A. Molloy: “‘Des Bes’ Friend a N—– Ever Had: Paternalism and the WPA Narratives”
1997
Brent Butler
1996
Jason Moralee: “The Cursed Stomach: Diet and the Construction of Holiness in Late Antique Syria”
1995
Marc Eagle
1994
Jim Emmons: “The Variae of Cassiodorus: Romans, Barbarians, and Accommodation in 6th Century Italy”
1993
Frank Reckard: “New Mexico, 1890-1930: Land of Four Cultures? Changing Perceptions of the Pueblo Indians”
1992
Kathleen M. Miller: “Before the Intifada: A History of Palestinian Women’s Politicization in the Twentieth Century”
1991
Christian Peterson: “Zulu and Voortrekker: The Struggle for the Valleys of Natal”
1990
Carolyn Edwards: “Adolescence in Tudor and Stuart England”
1989
No prize awarded
1988
Elizabeth Ann McCormick: “Ann Conway”
1987
Brian Gunnarson: “Nationalism in Meiji Japan: Education, Athleticism and Baseball”
Stephanie Cooper: “Art Forgery: The Beauty and The Beast”
1986
No prize awarded
1985
Regan Rhea: “America the Vigilant”
1984
Jeff Goldstein: “Whose Land Is It? Customs and Security of Baronial Land Inheritance during the Reign of Henry II”
1983
Jennifer Berg: “Incest: the Muted Crime”
1982
Brian Scott Whaley: “The Incompatibility of a ‘Godly Society’ with a Free Commonwealth, or the tug-of-war between Order and Freedom in Seventeenth Century England”
1981
Miriam Raub: “Saint Daniel the Stylite and the Role of the Holy Man in Late Antiquity”
1980
Michael Bransfield: “Prohibitions and Jurisdictional Conflicts during the Early Years of James I’s Reign”
1979
David Weeks: “The 1917 Stockholm Conference: A Socialist Peace Initiative”
1978
Beth Liss: “A Social-Legal History of the Care and Treatment of Mentally Retarded Persons in the United States”
1977
Cynthia A. Wethe: “From the Inside Looking Out: Harassed and Harried Heretics”
1976
Leonie Van Gelder: “O how the Southwest Wind Blows! A Study of Phelips, Eliot and Pym, three leaders of the opposition from the southwest of England
1975
Ronald S. Cohen: “The Atomic Bomb in Literature and Film”
1974
Clark Rivera: “The Quest for the True Church: Separatists and the Congregationalists, 1590-1640”
1973
Mary Suydam: “Comparisons of Mystical Thought in the Medieval West”
1972
James H. Wells
1971
Nevin C. Brown: “The Church and Slavery: The Development of Religion and Pro-Slavery Sentiment in the Ante-bellum South”
1970
Dianne Dennis: “Theodore Roosevelt: Historian”
1969
Robert H. Plaxico: “Trade and the Northern Nguni State Systems”
1968
Stephen E. Lucas: “The Role of Rhetoric in History as Exemplified by the Oratory of Maximillen Robespierre”
1967
Charles Storke: “Expropriation of Foreign-Owned Oil Properties in Mexico”