Department of History

The Hisham Sharabi Graduate Essay Award is the department's way of recongnizing excellent examples of writing and research by our graduate students. Awards are announced in the fall semester. The competition was named in honor of Dr. Hisham Sharabi, who retired in the spring of 1998 after more than forty years of distinguished service teaching undergraduates and training graduate students. Dr. Sharabi passed away in Beirut in January 2005.

The 2005-2006 awards were announced at the departmental reception in September. Congratulations to this year's recipients.

Shared First Prize:

John Corcoran, "Divided Power, Shared Responsibility: Theoretical and Practical Relationships Between Uezd and Guberniia Zemstvos, 1864-1917," a paper examining the way governmental services were administered in rural Russia during the last half of the 19th century. Professor Evtuhov advising.

Meredith Oyen, "Deserting Duty or Fighting Discrimination? Chinese Seamen in the Allied Merchant Marines in WW II," which explored the degree to which Chinese deserters from the Allied Merchant Marines were actually using the act of desertion to fight racism within the Merchant Marine, or as a way to circumvent restrictive U.S. immigration laws. Professor Nancy Tucker advising.

Honorable Mention:

Hoda Yousef, "Poetry in Migration: An Arabic Eulogy of President William McKinley," an exploration of an early Arab American's poetic work in memory of the assassinated President McKinley. Professor Games advising.