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 (Award for Outstanding Academic Achievement)

Leighton Barnes – Hysterical Women: The Fight for an Expanded British Franchise at the Turn of the 20th Century (Winner of the Stow Persons Award for Outstanding Senior Honors Thesis in History) (Award for Outstanding Student Service)

Allison Clark – Commodifying the Spirit Lake Massacre: Abbie Gardner Sharp and Her Role in the Settler-Centric Memory of the Event (Winner of the Stow Persons Award for Outstanding Senior Honors Thesis in History)

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  (Award for Outstanding Student Service)

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)