History Majors At Work
To study history is to make history. History majors hone this craft as researchers and writers, and they do so in the classroom, among other scholars, and as members of the community at large.
Here are recent examples of the work by our students at Bates and outside.
Recent History Theses
2024-25 Honors Theses
Four seniors wrote and defended year-long honors theses in history this last academic year, including:
Keira January, “Women for the Home, Children, and Resistance: Motherhood as a Political Strategy in Chile’s Anti-Allende and Anti-Pinochet Movements”
Willa Wang, “Jujubes on the Margin: Trauma, Community, and Memories of a Village in Central Shanxi”
2024-25 Semester-long theses included, among others:
Nick Brown, “Palace of Industry? French-Canadian Wage Suppression in a Maine Mill Town,” Fall 2024
Eli Criss, “From Guardianship to Empire: The Monroe Doctrine and the Belief in U.S. Mission and Destiny,” Winter 2025
Kevin Duong, “The Development of the Image of Thomas Nast the Political Cartoonist,” Fall 2024
Lucy Edmunds, “The Immediate and Intergenerational Impacts of the Boarding/Missionary School Movement on Indigenous American Women,” Fall 2024
Maura Ferrigno, “Tightening the Reins: The Regulation of Gender and Sexuality Non-Conforming People in New York City, 1890-1940,” Winter 2025
Grace Householter, “The Fine Line Between Progress and Pain: The History of English Language Learning Program Policies and Their Impacts,” Fall 2024
Gongshi Huang, “Royal Guards, The Mixi Sword, and Political Identities: Mongols as Co-Founders of the Ming Dynasty”
Bora Lagunda, [Working Title] In Search of Witches: An Exploration of Kongo Cosmology and Witchcraft
Junsung Jeon, “Temporal Justice: The Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal, the Challenge of Time, and Documenting Japanese Wartime Sexual Violence,” Winter 2025
James Jimenez, “El Corazon Esta Viviendo: A History of Puerto Rican Independence,” Winter 2025
George Miller, “The Construction of Monastic Holiness: Patriarchal and Monastic Expressions of Ecclesiastical and Spiritual Monastic Authority and Identity in pre-Chalcedonian Christian Egypt,” Fall/Winter 2024-5
Julia Neumann, “Viso aspectoque Agricola quaererent famam, pauci interpretarentur: Perceptions of Roman Masculinity in Antiquity and Today,” Winter 2025
Emma Seitz, “Der Krieg des Erinnerns: Manipulation of Memory in Cold War Divided Germany,” Fall 2024
Declan Sheehan, “Before Year Zero: Genocide, State Violence, and Anti-Demoncratic Action, From Sihanouk to the Khmer Rouge,” Fall 2024
Matthew Shrake, “Charitable Generosity in the Wake of Vatican II Reform: Interpreting Resulting Changes in Contributions of American Catholics,” Winter 2025
Jimmy Staller, “Challenging a System of Terror: The Political Transformation of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo,” Fall 2024
Truman Williams, “Under the Mountaintop Middle Men Making Momentum in the Movement Percy Sutton and Lincoln Ragsdale” Winter 2025
Life After Bates
Cody Pfeiffer (‘23) writes:
“I am currently a law student at Washington and Lee University, where I received a full tuition scholarship for all three years. I just finished my first year at the law school, and I am now in the process of trying to join a law journal. This summer, I will be working for a legal aid organization, the Legal Aid Justice Center, in their office in Falls Church, Virginia. I really enjoyed my first year of law school and had a great time playing flag football on Fridays during the fall semester.
After graduation but before law school, I had an internship with a legal aid organization near my home in Maryland called Shore Legal Access, and I held that internship until December of 2023 when I got a temporary job with Shore Legal that lasted until I started law school in August.”
Photo Credit: The Bates Student, November 10, 2021