Completed Capstone Papers
2023-2024
Kyle Applegate
“Myths and Memories: The Czech(oslovak) Legion’s Influence on the Creation and Legitimization of the First Czechoslovak Republic”
Advisor: James Shedel
Nargis Azaryun
“The New World Disorder: The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order”
Advisor: James Millward
Eamonn Bellin
“‘Justice to Our People’: John and William Gladstone in the Age of Abolition”
Advisor: Alison Games
Tanushree Bhatia
“Dalit in the Digital Space: Narratives of Dalit Feminists in Chitrakoot and Reimagining Community Media through Everyday Histories”
Advisor: Ananya Chakravarti
Bryan Checo
“Specters of 1945: The Legacy of the Historikerstreit in Third Reich Historiography”
Advisor: Aviel Roshwald
Joshua Downes (MAGIC/MSFS)
“Confronting the ‘Better’ American: An Investigation into American Military Behavior in the Boxer Rebellion, 1900-1901”
Advisor: James Millward
Sareena Dubey
“Of Rats and Men—Exploring Othering in the 1924 Los Angeles Pneumonic Plague Outbreak through Photographs: Insights from the 1907 San Francisco Bubonic Plague”
Advisor: Mireya Loza and Timothy Newfield
Frank Gao
“Smedley Butler, the Marines, and the Scaffoldings of Empire: Nation Building from the Philippines to Afghanistan”
Advisor: Toshihiro Higuchi
You (Leo) Li
“Mustached Cross-Dressing Performer: Mei Lanfang’s Story of Resistance during the Sino-Japanese War”
Advisor: Toshihiro Higuchi
Shea Megale (MAGIC/MSFS)
“Priests of Sky: Bird Priests as Status Markers and Embodiments of Identity in Funerary Artifacts and Beyond”
Advisor: James Millward and Gregory Afinogenov
Matthew Miyamoto
“Cross Pacific Prisoners: Japanese Americans in US-Japan Civilian Hostage Exchanges During World War II”
Advisor: Toshihiro Higuchi
Mallory Page
“Conquering with Cartography: Japanese Depictions of Hokkaido During the Tokugawa Period”
Advisor: Toshihiro Higuchi
Jason Roeder
“Never Say ‘Jawohl’ Again: Portraying the Citizen Soldier in West German Cinema”
Advisor: Anna von der Goltz and Thomas Zimmer
Caleb Russell
“The One and the Two: Monism and Dualism in the Church and the Works of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola and Marsilio Ficino”
Advisor: Tommaso Astarita
Glenn Williamson
“Demographics, Sovereignty and Land: State Building by Trustees in the Oklahoma and Indian Territories and the Mandate for Palestine”
Advisor: James Millward
Zhenhao (Oscar) Yu
“Dragon Perching on the Ear: Deafness in Late Imperial China”
Advisor: James Millward
2022-2023
Eric Anderson
“Shipwrecked: The Burlingame Policy and US Strategy in China, 1867-1871”
Advisor: Adam Rothman
Theodore Bergwerk
“State Formation and Empire Building: A Case Study of the Mughal and Qing Empires”
Advisor: James Millward
Idan Chazan
“’The Straw that Broke the Camel’s Back’: The 1996 Blood Affair and the Navon Commission”
Advisor: Gregory Afinogenov
Guanran Cui
“Ming-Mongol Wars and Borderland Society in the Mid-Sixteenth Century”
Advisor: James Millward
Molly Duggan
“Images of Africa: British and American Perceptions of Africa During the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries”
Advisor: Meredith McKittrick
Katherine Evans
“’What Use Are the Laws When Money is King?’: Acknowledging the Colonial Origins of Illicit Finance”
Advisor: Jamie Martin
Abbey Finn
“From Curanderismo to Espiritismo: Witchcraft and Colonialism in New Spain”
Advisor: Susan Pinkard
Halaina Halsted
“Women as Community Builders: Feminist Periodicals in 1960s-1970s Seattle”
Advisor: Michael Amezcua
Kendall Henry
“’They’re African Freedom-Fighters Now’: American Public Opinion, White Mercenaries and the Congo Crisis, 1960-1965”
Advisor: Meredith McKittrick
Josephine Kim
“Searching for Rovaniemi: A Local City Bound by Arctic History and the Imagination”
Advisor: Jordan Sand
Shuhao Liang
“Not Just Nationalism: Chinese Attitudes Towards Foreign Cuisines in Republican Shanghai”
Advisor: Susan Pinkard
Devinie Rukshani Lye-Ukwattage
“The Domestic Origins of the International Nuclear Non-Proliferation Regime”
Advisor: Toshihiro Higuchi
Ansley Markwell
“Red Peril and Unamicable Amis: Fear and the Soviet and American Occupations of Postwar Germany”
Advisor: Anna von der Goltz
Mallory Marlin
“Connected Worlds: Cotton Mather and the Nishmath-Chajim”
Advisor: Alison Games
Sarah Myers
“Female Freedom Fighters: Ex-Combatants of Southern African Liberation Movements”
Advisor: Meredith McKittrick
Nicholas Nunez
“Multimodal Matrix: Dynamic Chinese Foreign Policy in Europe During the Sino-Soviet Split”
Advisor: Toshihiro Higuchi
Maggie Shaw
“The Contradictory Life of Ida Tarbell: An American Working Woman Against the Development of Women’s Rights”
Advisor: Joseph McCartin
Elizabeth Siwica
“Resistance to Neo-Slavery in French West Africa”
Advisor: Meredith McKittrick
Angelica Krystel von Kumberg
“Prince Valerio Borghese and the Two Ita(Lies): Operation Gladio and the Years of Lead”
Advisor: Aviel Roshwald and Gregory Afinogenov
Julia Walsh
“The Diary of Dr. Celia M. Millward: Understanding Academic Women and Motherhood in the 1960s”
Advisor: Joseph McCartin and Susan Pinkard
Sijian Wang
“Consulting the Deities: Superstition and Violence in the 19th-Century Guangdong”
Advisor: James Millward
Ruhao Wen
“A Bridge Between East and West: Chinese Export Porcelain, British Reinventions, and Cultural Interaction in the Qing Period”
Advisor: Carol Benedict
Ziheng Yin
“Reorienting Gasprinsky’s Legacy: from Nationalism to the Bourgeois Revolution, Women’s Rights and Anti-Colonialism”
Advisor: Mustafa Aksakal
Haoqian Yu
“Nationalism and Communism in 1929: Chinese Communist Party’s Struggle and the Chinese Eastern Railway Incident”
Advisor: James Millward
Zhanhao Zhang
“Contemporary Taiwanese Nationalism from 1996 to 2008”
Advisor: Aviel Roshwald
2021-2022
Aiyad, Mariam
“Anticolonial Imaginaries: A Visual History of Black-Palestinian Solidarity”
Advisor: Jamie Martin
Allgood, William
“British Periodicals and the Impact of Battlefield Outcomes on British Neutrality during the American Civil War”
Advisor: Chandra Manning
Andersen, Jacob
“Black Power, On and Off Campus: A Local History of the San Francisco State Strike, 1968–1969”
Advisor: Marcia Chatelain & Michael Kazin
Castellon Gutierrez, Jose
“The Ones Left Behind: Legacy of the Salvadoran Civil War”
Advisor: John Tutino
Donahue, Casey (MAGIC/MSFS)
“Imagining O’Neil, Nebraska: Irishness and its Uses in a Western American Town”
Advisor: Cóilín Parsons
Huntsman, Stewart
“Fueling Fascism at Home and Abroad: How the Relationships Between U.S. Oilmen and European Fascists Shaped International and U.S. Domestic Politics”
Advisor: David Painter
Logan, Taelor
“Sealing the Deal – Balancing Diplomacy and Science in the Age of Conservation”
Advisor: Toshihiro Higuchi
Mobley, Tianna
“Legal Personalities of Early Modern Afro-Colombians in the Spanish Atlantic”
Advisor: Alison Games
Peng, Shuang
“Women Balked at Their Doorstep: Gender Division of Labor in British Propagandic Images, 1914-1927”
Advisor: James Millward
Schmidt, Johannes
“Spanish Schoolmen in the Shadows: Rediscovering the School of Salamanca from el descubrimiento through 20th century Mexico”
Advisor: James Millward
Torres Yunda, Miguel
“The Erosion of Paradise: The Capitalist Exploitation of the Amazon in the
Twentieth Century”
Advisor: Ananya Chakravarti
Walsh, Kathleen
“Niemals Vergessen! Remembering and Forgetting World War II in Vienna, 1946”
Advisor: James Shedel & Aviel Roshwald
2020-2021
Cai, Yuxuan
“Writing History in an Empire-to-Be: Ottoman Historical Accounts on the Family of Turahanoğlu in the Fifteenth and Early Sixteenth Centuries”
Advisor: Gabor Agoston & James Millward
Cervantes, Valerie
“Creating the Guyanais Experience: Global Pursuits and Regional Realities in the Formation of Contemporary French and Guyanais Identities”
Advisor: Toshihiro Higuchi
Guo, Jiahui
“Rethinking Colonialism”
Advisor: David Painter & Olufemi Taiwo
Keifer, Daniel
“Sparring Partners: Evaluating Sino-Russian Détente through an Energy Perspective” / “The Tengiz Dilemma: Oil and the Institutional Underpinnings of Nazarbayev’s Authoritarianism”
Advisor: Thane Gustafson / David Painter
Kirkpatrick, Matthew
“Purifying Panama and Nicaragua: Security and Railways during the Taft Administration”
Advisor: John Tutino
Lewis, Victoria
“‘Patriotic Education’?: Federal Involvement in Education at Native American Boarding Schools and Japanese American Internment Camps”
Advisor: Katherine Benton-Cohen
Martin, Allie
“Who Really Tore Down the Wall?: Perspectives on the Myth of Ronald Reagan and the End of the Cold War”
Advisor: David Painter
Mehr, Emmanuel
“‘Scientific Nation-Making’: Harry H. Laughlin’s Quest to Harness Eugenics and Remake the U.S. Immigration System, 1919-1943”
Advisor: Katherine Benton-Cohen
Shi, Lianyu
“Patriotism, Brotherhood, and Prosperity—The Nationalist Reform of the Chinese Countryside between 1927 and 1937”
Advisor: James Millward
Tashjy, Nathan
“Prima, Pastasciutta!: Pasta, and the Development of Regional Italian Culinary Identity in the United States”
Advisor: Susan Pinkard
Zahner, Sophia
“E-Mail Order Brides: Economic Collapse, the Internet, and Human Trafficking in Russia”
Advisor: Michael David-Fox & Christopher Stolarski
Zhou, Yujin
“From Divergence to Convergence: Priorities and Sino-American Normalization in the Long Seventies”
Advisor: Toshihiro Higuchi
2019-2020
Atwood, Roger
“Our Word is Fire: Writers and Revolution at La Pájara Pinta, El Salvador, 1966-1975”
Advisor: John Tutino
Brazzel, Benjamin
“Guerrillas of the Rif”
Advisor: Osama Abi-Mershed
Chaudhry, Haris
“Treatment of Gender Nonconformity Among and in Relation to South Asian Sufis”
Advisor: James Millward
Colletta, Matthew
“Crisis in German Agriculture: New Strategies and New Voices, 1871-1914”
Advisor: Anna von der Goltz
Davis, Jared
“Formalized Voluntarism: Cultural Policy and Refugee Resettlement in the Americas, 1933-1942”
Advisor: Katherine Benton-Cohen
Ji, Fangchao
“Rethinking the Chinese Mining Frontier: The British and the Chinese Kongsi in West Borneo in the First Half of the 19th Century (1800-1854)”
Advisor: Carol Benedict
Johnson, Rachel
“Cultivating Power: American Corporatism in US-Japan Nuclear Power Development”
Advisor: Toshihiro Higuchi
Medine, Alec
“Between Pride and Shame: The Austrian Resistance Movement and the Denazification of Austria, 1945-1995”
Advisor: James Shedel
Murray, Philip
“Pivot Out of the Pacific: Oil and the Creation of a Chinese Empire in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries”
Advisor: James Millward
Nakashima, Erena
“Making African Americans Visible: Carroll Greene Jr.’s Efforts in the Museum of History and Technology in 1960s”
Advisor: Adam Rothman & Maurice Jackson
Pollard, John
“‘Queen Victoria is Dead and the Puritans are Long Gone’: Frank Kameny, Gay Activism, and 1970s Federal Politics”
Advisor: Joseph McCartin
Robinson, Morgan
“‘She Was an Enemy of Black People’: Exploring Black Women and Misogynoir in the Black Panther Party”
Advisor: Adam Rothman & Marcia Chatelain
Simon, Patrick
“The Nefarious Side of Globalization: Narcocaudillos and the Transformation and Diversification of the North American Illicit Economy”
Advisor: John Tutino
Stough, Rebeckah
“Resistance Under Watchful Eyes: Restriction and Resilience in the Bracero Program”
Advisor: Katherine Benton-Cohen
Wheatley, Rachel
“‘March on, then, to the Unholy Work’: The Davis Resolutions and Southern Secession in Spring 1860”
Advisor: Chandra Manning
Zyla, Maria
“US-Cuban Race Relations in the Empire of Jim Crow: The 1912 Afro Cuban Massacre and the 1921 Tulsa African American Massacre”
Advisor: John Tutino
2018-2019
Andriessen, Samuel
“Resituating the Philippine-American War within United States Military History”
Advisor: Jordan Sand
Battalia, Michael (MAGIC/MSFS)
“The Establishment of a Newspaper Industry in Beirut during the 1870s and its Impact on Intellectual and Cultural Trends in the City”
Advisor: Judith Tucker
Berg, Dylan
“‘Lawlessness in Kentucky’: Written Advocacy and Violence in Eastern Kentucky”
Advisor: Alison Games
Bushman, Adrian
“Achilles’ Heel: Terrorism and US Foreign Policy in Lebanon, 1982-1984”
Advisor: David Painter
Cameron, Calla
“’Western and Modern’ versus ‘Aboriginal and Archaic’: Name Calling, Sendero Luminoso, and Representation in the Peruvian Truth and Reconciliation Commission”
Advisor: Bryan McCann and Erick Langer
Galesi, Loren
“Maize on the Move: The Impact of Tropical Cultivars on European Diffusion”
Advisor: John McNeill and Alison Games
Koebrich, Louisa
“Military Emancipation: A Revolutionary Tool”
Advisor: Chandra Manning
Naramore, Susan
“Art of the Republics: How Cosimo de’ Medici and Thomas Jefferson Used Classical Imagery to Express their Political Agendas”
Advisor: Alison Games
Prescott, Taylor
“From Subversives to State Actors: White Perceptions of the Jamaican Maroons Before, During, and After the Second Maroon War (1795-1796)”
Advisor: Alison Games and Maurice Jackson
Rosenthal, Sarah
“Expedient Bedfellows: Securitization of Sexual Deviance in Historical Context”
Advisor: Alison Games
Ross, Andrew
“Cosmic Configurations: Carl Sagan, Edward Teller, and the Contested Significance of the Nuclear Winter Hypothesis”
Advisor: Toshi Higuchi
Siripoonsap, Witawin
“Mistresses of the Budget: The Making of Smart Consumers in the Ladies’ Home Journal during the Great Depression”
Advisor: Alison Games
Slingluff, Sarah
“Of Mosques and Munyas: Rethinking the Umayyad Dynasty”
Advisor: Judith Tucker
van Harmelen, Jonathan
“Desert Dungeons: An Introductory Study into Comparative Incarceration and Civil Liberties of the United States and France (1942-1962)”
Advisor: David Painter and Osama Abi-Mershed
Williams, Elizabeth
“Soldiering Students: Militarism, the Indian Wars, and the Carlisle Indian Industrial School”
Advisor: Alison Games
2017-2018
Andrews, Rebecca
“Peninsular Mestizaje: Doña Francisca Pizarro and Mestiza Legacy in 16th and 17th Century Trujillo, Spain”
Baxley, Colleen
“Hunger for Resistance: Women and Protest in 20th-Century Bolivia”
Carmona, Ricardo
“Between Anarchy & Despotism: The Rise and Fall of Iturbide’s Grand Coalition”
Dalrymple, Justin
“‘Modernizing’ the Fellah: Education, Development, and Nationalist Responses in Mandate Palestine and Transjordan”
Donnell, Natalie
“Navigating Gendered Spaces: Catherine de Médicis, femme politique”
El-Sallabi, Thana
“The Tribe as Social Capital: An Interpretive Application of Bourdieu to Libya’s Tribes”
Gfeller, Haley
“Your Job in Where?: Racism and the European and Far Eastern Civil Affairs Training Schools, 1943-1945”
Hunter, Michael
“Understanding War in Wide-Angle: Indochina, the Vietnam War, and the Mayaguez Incident”
Schnakenberg, Collin
“‘A Tumultuous Rable of People’: A Comparative Analysis of the Midland Revolt and the Western Uprising”
Sun, Xiao
“The Logic of Habits: US Soldiers, US Exceptionalism, and China-US Relations during the Boxer Rebellion”
Tahiroglu, Merve
“Cosmopolitan Ottoman-Turkish Feminism in the Second Constitutional Era”
Wakeel, Zaara
“The Journey after Indenture: An Analysis into the Experience of Return of Indentured Labor to India, 1860-1910”
2016-2017
Abosch, Elizabeth
“The View from the Middle: The Family, Russia, and the World on the Illustrated Pages of Niva”
Kawashima, Ryo
“A War Without Weapons: Prewar Japan’s Propaganda Directed at the U.S. and Other Anglophone Countries”
Kitkowski, Ryan
“Pictures and Pedagogy: Film and the American Tutelary Regime in US-Occupied Korea, 1945-1950”
Lann, Preston
“Savaged Land: How Armed Conflict Affected the Environment and Society of Afghanistan, 1979 – 2014”
Moreno, Alan
“Regulated Competition in the American Century: The Origins and International Scope of the Federal Trade Commission, c. 1900-1952”
Schell, Nathan
“The Hidden Locus: How Episcopal Relations in the Hundred Years War Hint at Medieval Ecclesiastical Unity”
Seeling, Christopher
“Fear and Loathing in the Mediterranean: Chivalry and Legitimacy-Making in the Reign of Charles V”
Stephens, Leigh
“Normandy During the French Wars of Religion: The Discourse of Violence”
Zemanick, Kyra
“‘The Indians Will Be Saved’: White Women’s Service and Resistance to the Federal Native American School System”
2015-2016
MA in Global, International and Comparative History (MAGIC)
Clapper, Daniel
“Launching ‘Project Independence’: US-European Relations and the Energy Crisis of the 1970s”
Daniel, Kyra
“Early American Planter Responses to the Slave Revolt in Saint-Domingue, 1791-1793”
Lambert, David
“Saltpeter in the Early Republic”
Lee, Rachel
“A Vital Engine of the Atlantic Intelligence: The First Printers and Print Cultures of the Greater Anglo-Caribbean, 1718-1820”
Liu, Yi
“The Globalization of Chinese Pharmaceuticals between 1902 and 1937”
Rothwell, Rosalind
“From ‘English Modes’ to American Dress: East India Calico in the Eighteenth-Century Chesapeake”
Sikes, Adam
“Perceptions of British Provincial and Regular Forces During the Seven Years’ War”
Smith, Natalie
“Ville Hydrophobe: Social Geography and the Water Crisis in Nineteenth-Century Marseille”
Sparks, Matthew
“Schools of Discontent: Surrealism and the Global Radical Network in the Eastern Mediterranean and Caribbean, 1927-1945”
Tegels, Chelsea
“Strangers in a Familiar Land: Pioneers and the Meskwaki Settlement 1832-1900”
MA in Global History (GU-KCL)
Ivey, James
“Sabotaging Women’s Football: An Investigation of the Football Association’s 1921 Ban of Women’s Football”
Manfield, Sabrina
“The Personal and Public Politics of Lend-Lease: How Aid to the Soviet Union Shaped the Fate of the Grand Alliance”
McCormick-Thompson, Brenna
“The Epitome of an Era: Representations of Collective Memory and National Identity aboard the Cutty Sark”
2014-2015
Hutton, Richard
“Cleanliness Brings Health, the Story of Lincoln Tunnel and US Public Diplomacy in 1950s Indonesia”
Jones, Robert “Bobor”
“Rabat And Algiers: French Colonial Policy and Perceptions of Urban Space in the Colonial Capitals”
Moynihan, Lisa
“La Onda Chicana and Tropicália ‘Happenings’: A Comparative Study of the National Crises of Music and Counterculture in Mexico and Brazil, 1968-1971”
Munoz, Carmen MAGIC/MSFS graduate
“U.S.-Turkish Relations and Turkey’s Democratic Consolidation”
Peavy, Susan
“Cubans and Haitians in the Refugee City: Power and Exclusion in Global Miami, 1977-1981”
Ruggieri, Samuel
“Imagining Alternative Futures: The Arab East Looks to Anatolia, 1918-1923”
Vana, ALLISON
“Metics and Misérables: Economic and Demographic Change to European Communities in Algeria and Tunisia during the Nineteenth Century”
Zorrilla Arena Sandoval, Jose Antonio
“Selling Hope to the Hopeless: The Alliance for Progress, the Modernization Theory, and the US Propaganda Apparatus”