2022-23

Emily Arndt – “There Ain’t No Shame in Looking for a Better World”: The Evolution of Cultural Influence Behind the Folklore of Robin Hood

Baccile, Gabe – Influence of Anti-Catholic Organizations on the Jobs Available to Catholic Immigrants in Iowa

Roxanna Barbulescu – “Nobody is Nostalgic for the Stalinist Era, But…”: Romanian American Memory of the Communist Period

Leighton Barnes – Hysterical Women: The Fight for an Expanded British Franchise at the Turn of the 20th Century

Allison Clark – Commodifying the Spirit Lake Massacre: Abbie Gardner Sharp and Her Role in the Settler-Centric Memory of the Event

Phoebe Dillard – Wavering Divisions: Fluctuations of Gender Divides in British Civil Defense During World War II

Nicole Gilbert – Fame and Femininity: First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy’s Public Diplomacy During the Cold War

Dan Hettrick – Tlingit Resistance to Presbyterian Missionary Efforts and Forced Acculturation, 1866-1917

Talia Hill – Alabama’s Black Belt: The Demographics that Shaped the Region

Miles Kramer – Forever Conquered: The Changing Role of Vikings in Modern and Contemporary Anglo-American Culture

Jesse Miller – “License to Do Evil in the Name of Good”: Political Radicalization and Organizational Success in the Wilmington Coup of 1898

2021-22

Megan Christianson – Legislating the Landscape: The Battle for a Federal Wilderness Bill for Montana, 1979-1988

Sophia Gilbert – The Direction of Lesbian Organizing During the Reagan-Bush Era

Reagan Hart – “Injure Their Reputation, and Terminate Their Life”: Privacy for Venereal Disease Patients in Early Modern England  (Winner of the Stow Persons Award for Outstanding Senior Honors Thesis in History)

Jack Kamp – “It Ought to Be Possible”: The Kennedy Administration, Black Radicalism, and the Civil Rights Movement, 1963

Jack Motz – “Rudy Thinks He’s Batman”: Koch, Giuliani, and Dinkins in the 1989 Race for Mayor

Lauren Johnson – Holding Out For a Hero(ine): A Postfeminist Analysis of Superhero Stories from the 1980s

Jack Lauer – Breaking Bread: The Equal Rights Amendment and the Politicization of Foodways, 1972-1982 (Winner of the Stow Persons Award for Outstanding Senior Honors Thesis in History)

Sydney Uhlman – “Love in Action”: Christian Anarchism in the Catholic Worker Movement

 

2020-21

Nicole Allen – The Life and Patronage of Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge: Exploring Developments in Cultural Philanthropy with the Institutionalization of American Classical Music

Emily Bronswick — "I Felt if Things Didn't Change, the World Would Come to an End": Black Iowa Women's Activism During the Civil Rights Era, 1945-1965 (Winner of the Stow Persons Award for Outstanding Senior Honors Thesis in History)

Alyssa Grady – "My Ladys Soul": The Successes of Elizabeth Siddal and Jane Morris, & the Rise of the Pre-Raphaelite Sisterhood

Hannah Haack – Pilots in the First World War: How the Phenomenon of the Flying Ace Impacted the War Effort

Carly Heying – “To Follow the Bright Star”: American Involvement in the Spanish Civil War and the Shaping of the U.S. Popular Front, 1937-1938 (Winner of the Stow Persons Award for Outstanding Senior Honors Thesis in History) (Award for Outstanding Academic Achievement for the highest cumulative History GPA)

Megan I McEvoy – Rural Resistance: The Communist Party in 1930s Iowa Farming Communities

Lydia Nesslar – The Woman Question: The Intersection of Evolutionary Discourse and the Development of Early Feminism 

Dieter Ostermann – The Engineering, Science, and Management War Training Program: Higher Education and the Second World War

Salma Rios – Man, Myth, Legend: The Many Faces of Thomas More

Travis Siegel –  “If We Had Lost The War, We All Would Have Been Prosecuted As War Criminals:” The Bombing Campaign Against Japan in World War Two

Allison Steger – Paving the Way for a Public Presence: Gay and Lesbian Activism, Methods, and Successes in East Germany (Award for Outstanding Academic Achievement for the highest cumulative History GPA)

 

2019-20

Harry Daley-Young – The Fall of Penn Central and the Rise of Conrail: Corporate Failure and the Politics of Deregulation and Nationalization in the 1970s

Sydney DeBoer — In Our Schools, In Our Stores, and In Our Homes; The Office of Price Administration, 1941-1947 (Award for Outstanding Student Service)

Samuel Eck – The Emma Goldman Clinic: From Collectivism to Corporatism

Emma T Johnson – “One Day There Will Be No Such Thing as Religious Intolerance”: Anti-Catholicism During the Election of 1960

Benjamin Kimball – Severus of Antioch and the Anti-Chalcedonian Movement

Emily Lefeber – “Nothing Comes to Her Who Sits and Waits”: The League of Women Voters of Iowa and Citizenship After Woman Suffrage, 1920-1940 (Winner of the Stow Persons Award for Outstanding Senior Honors Thesis in History)

Benjamin Louviere – Beer and Spirit: A confluence of medieval traditions in brewing and monasticism

Cameron Moeller – Variably Innate: Inconsistent British Perceptions of Martial Races in the Late-Victorian Indian Army (Winner of the Stow Persons Award for Outstanding Senior Honors Thesis in History) (Award for Outstanding Academic Achievement)

Katlyn Rozovics — Passive Imperialists: The Imperial Attitudes in Ryse: Son of Rome

Clayton Saffran-Johnson – Money Talks: A History of Campaign Finance Reform in the 2000’s

Michael Steffen – Offensive to the Majority: The Formation, Activism, and Survival of the Iowa City Gay Liberation Front, 1970-1999 (Award for Outstanding Academic Achievement)

 

2018-19

Audrey Brock — She’s Lost Control: Portrayals of Mentally Ill Women in Mid-20th Century Popular Culture

Ethan Everhart — Comstock, Comedy and Conservatism

Gwyneth Forsythe — Girl Guides in the First World War:  Claiming a Place in the Public Sphere

Olivia Kane — Prophecy for the Nation: Thomas of Erceldoune’s Prophetic Legacy in the Scottish Wars of Independence and Beyond

Mila Kaut — “Go on, thou brave woman leader”: Churchwomen, Churchbuilding, and Print Culture in the Construction of Black Citizen Identities in Iowa, 1868-1900
(Winner of the Stow Persons Award for Outstanding Senior Honors Thesis in History)

Sarah Lauer — Honor and Shame in the Sagas of the Icelanders:  Women’s Struggle for Influence

Joseph Steinbronn — Reviewing the Robertson Commission and Mwambao on the Kenyan Coast

Zhonghua Wang — Concentration, Pollution and Regulation: Iowa Hog Production from 1978 to 2017

 

2017-18

Evan Bittner — The Socialization of Socialism: Radical Leftist Periodicals in Iowa and the Midwest, 1895-1920

Katherine Boyd — Partial Suffrage in Iowa: 1894

Allison Buser — The Andreae System: Defending Brewing Interests and Consolidating German-American Political Power In the 1914 Iowa State Elections

Abby Dockum — "Upon the Fields of Friendly Strife”:  The Role of Sport at the Iowa Pre-Flight School, 1942-1945 (Winner of the Stow Persons Award for Outstanding Senior Honors Thesis in History)

Rebekah Gansemer — Opposing Tyranny: White Resistance against the Rhodesian Front (1965–1977) (Winner of the Stow Persons Award for Outstanding Senior Honors Thesis in History)

Cindy Garcia — A Turf Issue: Mexican American Perspectives on Interactions with African Americans in Davenport, 1949-1972

Morgan Hebert — The Monster study: A Case Study in ethical research practices

Brian Miner — 1965 Communist Purge in Indonesia, U.S. Foreign Relations in Indonesia

Paige Mitchell — Reconsidering the Rhetoric of Cultural Display: A Look at the University of Iowa Museum of Natural History’s Meskwaki Diorama

Megan Ryan — Herbert Hoover & the American Relief Administration’s Efforts in Soviet Russia, 1921-1923; Anti-Soviet Sentiment Stymies Success

Julia Rohn — Creating the Encomium: The Progression of Emma of Normandy’s Political Career

Joshua Stringer — The Greatest American Comeback: Harry S. Truman and the 1948 Election

 

2016-17

Cormac Broeg — Killing Buter's Bloodhounds: Iowa Soldiers and an Act of Political Violence in Reconstruction South Carolina (Winner of the Stow Persons Award for Outstanding Senior Honors Thesis in History)

Forest R. Johnson III — The Uncrowned King: Axel Oxenstierna and Sweden's Rise to Power During the Thirty Years War

Katelyn Zingg — Civil War Prison Escapes

 

2015-16

Taylor Finch — "Powerless, With a Guitar": Music and Student Protest at the University of Iowa: 1965-1971

Ryan Kunkle — Hanc [Animam] Tu Exerce Optimis in Rebus: Cicero's Use of a Platonic Rhetorical Framework to Provide a Spiritual Justification of His Political Philosophy (Winner of the Stow Persons Award for Outstanding Senior Honors Thesis in History)

Xiao Albert Wang — Into Modernity: Political Struggle and Transition during the Late Qing Dynasty

Abigail Weaver — Establishing an Institution: The Public Library Movement in Iowa 1900-1920

 

2014-15

Catherine Babikian — Our multi-racial way of life? Immigration, disease, and identity in Britain, 1958–1983

Sylvia Bochner — “Here is Why I Love the Fight”: Gender, Labor and Family in the Letters of Pearl McGill

Quinn M. Hejlik — Slovak Questions and Communist Answers: The Communist Czechoslovak Government's Response to Slovak National Identity Following the Prague Spring of 1968

Maureen Owens — "Justice, Temper, Magnanimity, and Judgment": Classical Influences on the Public Persona of Elizabeth I

Scott Pate — “Cram Your Spam”: Ottumwa and the P-9 Hormel Strike of 1985-86 

Emily J. Pettit — Aborigines’ Dreaming or Britain’s Terra Nullius: Perceptions of Land Use in Colonial Australia

Matthew Rechtoris — Eugenical Legislation and Sterilization in Iowa:  1911-1977,  From Francis Galton, Buck v. Bell (1927), to the Iowa Board of Eugenics

Ashley Wiser — “Dear John Letters":  A Study of American Break-Ups Via Mail During World War II (Winner of the Stow Persons Award for Outstanding Senior Honors Thesis in History)