2024
Gramm Coffman, "Waters of Chaos: The Role of Rivers and Waterways in North American Warfare" (PDF not yet available)
Advisor: Judkin Browning
2023
Balaam Sherrod, "Dragoon Bold: The Creation of an American Cavalry Tradition" (PDF not yet available)
Advisor: Judkin Browning
* Winner of Outstanding Thesis Award *
2022
Caleb Guenther, "The Vietnam War in the American Zeitgeist: A Study of the Vietnam War in Film"
Advisor: Judkin Browning
Advisor: Michael Behrent
Jonathan Tyler, "Dixie Entrenched: The Transformational Nature of the First World War on the South"
Advisor: Judkin Browning
* Winner of Outstanding Thesis Award *
Connor Watts, "Conditions of Defeat: The Treatment of the Defeated in Anglo-Norman and Angevin Warfare from 1034-1216"
Advisor: Mary Valante
Thomas McLamb, "Cybernetics and the Penal Colony: A History of Capital, Machinery, and French Colonial Imprisonment"
Advisor: Elizabeth Perego
2021
Chamberlain Silkenat: "Sons of the Confederacy, Sons of Freedmen: Race, Manhood, and Motivation in North Carolina's Volunteer Regiments in the Spanish-American War"
Advisor: Judkin Browning
Elizabeth Bailey, "'There Was Little Time to Think and No Time to Cry': Grit, Professionalism, Femininity, and Female American World War II Military Nurses"
Advisor: Allison Fredette
Joshua Waddell, "With God on Our Side: Clerical Support for Secession and the Confederate War Effort in North Carolina"
Advisor: Judkin Browning
2020
Samuel Thibault, "The Cost of Loyalty: Contesting Allegiances during the Civil War and Reconstruction in North Carolina, 1861-1871"
Advisor: Judkin Browning
Louis Alex Wetherington, "George Edmund Badger: The Soul of North Carolina Unionism"
Advisor: Judkin Browning
Shannon Furr, "Bradwell vs. Illinois: The Life and Career of Myra Bradwell Within the Early American Women's Rights Movement"
Advisor: Allison Fredette
Rebekkah Watkins, "The Comparative Museum Experiencec of Atypical and Typical Learners"
Advisor: Andrea Burns
Ky Greene, "Systemic Racism in the Flint Water Crisis: A Media Analysis"
Advisor: Andrea Burns
William C. Raby, "'The Museum as a Tool to Develop Man's Future': Public Relations and Public History in Kannapolis, N.C."
Advisor: Karl Campbell
2019
Hadley Cluxton, "Entangled Histories: An Analysis of the Anglophone Histories of Science in Latin America from Dependence to Decoloniality, 1950-Present"
Advisor: René Harder Horst
Andrew J. Franklin, "Bastions or Burdens? Assessing the Role of Anglo-American Hospital Ships during the World Wars"
Advisor: Judkin Browning
Jacob Kahler, "Educating the Freedmen during the Civil War: Letters from Beaufort and New Bern, North Carolina, 1863-1865"
Advisor: Judkin Browning
Kennon Howell Keiser, Jr., "Weaponized Landscapes: An Environmental History of the Battle of Okinawa and its Aftermath"
Advisor: Judkin Browning
* Winner of Outstanding Thesis Award *
Cheyenne Abigail Williams, "A Woman's Place: Decolonizing Femininity Within American Indian Representations of Women in Eastern North American Museums"
Advisor: Andrea Burns
2018
Jewel Carrie Parker, "Agents of the Devil? Women, Witchcraft, and Medicine in Early America"
Advisor: Lucinda McCray
* Winner of Outstanding Thesis Award *
Graham Shelton, "Ethnopoiesis in Early Normandy"
Advisor: Mary Valante
Evan Garrett Wallace, "Tertius Romane: An Examination of Muscovite Mystical Political Theology"
Advisor: Anatoly Isaenko
2017
James Patrick Kellam, "Helms, Hunt, and Whiteness: The 1984 Senate Campaign in North Carolina"
Advisor: Karl Campbell
Brittney Maslowski, "Nevertheless, She Persisted: Antebellum Women's Education and Shifting Gender Roles in the South"
Advisor: Kristen Baldwin-Deathridge
Jessica Tierney McCausland, "Interpreting Elkmont Historic District: A Case on Historic Preservation in the NPS"
Advisor: Kristen Baldwin-Deathridge
* Winner of Outstanding Thesis Award *
Samuel A. Nicholls, "Watauga College and the Professionalization of Student Affairs: A Case Study"
Advisor: Karl Campbell
Madison Quesenberry, "Humble Queen of England: An Analysis of Eleanor of Aquitaine's Role in the Governance of the Angevin Empire"
Advisor: Mary Valante
2016
Connor Harney, "Killing the Myth of David: Minimizing the Cuban Revolution's Threat to U.S. Hegemony"
Advisor: Jeff Bortz
Patrick Shane Parker, "Appalachian Activists: The Civil Rights Movement in Asheville, North Carolina"
Advisor: Bruce Stewart
Ryan S. Parsons, "Irreconcilable Differences: A Revolution for the Soul of the Southern Baptist Convention"
Advisor: James Goff
Anthony Sadler, "Appalachian Baptism: The Asheville Flood of 1916"
Advisor: Timothy Silver
* Winner of Outstanding Thesis Award *
Advisor: Jeff Bortz
2015
Allen Sherrill, "Based on a True Story: Jesse James and the Reinterpretation of History in Popular Media"
Advisor: Judkin Browning
2014
John Benjamin Bradley, "The Trolley Car Company of Mexico City and the Absence of Institutionalized Accounting: 1940-1943"
Advisor: Jeff Bortz
Tamia Kyana Haygood, "Slavery White: A Study of Runaway Servants in Eighteenth-Century Virginia"
Advisor: Antonio Bly
Christopher Eric Howard, "Propaganda against Propaganda: Deconstructing the Dominant Narrative of the Committee on Public Information"
Advisor: Judkin Browning
* Winner of Outstanding Thesis Award *
Dylan James, "Advocating Scientism, 1963-2013"
Advisor: Michael Behrent
Joseph Eric Mathis, "A Practitioner's Guide to Applied Sustainability: Initial Explorations"
Advisor: Bruce Stewart
Daniel Anthony Patterson, "Who am I Now? A Question of Creek Identity, 1830-1907"
Advisor: Lynne Getz
Advisor: Benno Weiner
Douglas Tuers, "The Gaseous Study: An Early History of Mathematical Logic and Set Theory"
Advisor: Michael Behrent
David Charles Tyson, "The Return to Realpolitik: American Identity, Foreign Policy and the Clinton Administration in the Post-Cold War World, 1991-1994"
Advisor: Michael Krenn
Nathan Widener, "Peron's Political Radio Melodrama: Peronism and Radio Culture, 1920-1955"
Advisor: René Harder Horst
2013
Sarah LaRae Cusick, "Perspectives and Angles: A Journalistic History Through the Argentine Political Identity from 1946-1983"
Advisor: Lynne Getz
Taulby Hawthorne Edmondson, "Comparative Memories: War, Defeat, and Historical Memory Formation in the Post-Civil War American South and Post-World War II Germany"
Advisor: Judkin Browning
Joshua David Clark Haddix, "Agrarian Reform and Agricultural Improvement in Lowland Scotland, 1750-1850"
Advisor: Michael Turner
Misty Harville, "Young Jesters and Old Fools: Jesting and Male Youth Masculinity in Seventeenth-Century England"
Advisor: Edward Behrend-Martinez
* Winner of Outstanding Thesis Award *
Ashley Ellen Humphries, "The Migration of Westfield Quakers from Surry County, North Carolina, 1786-1828"
Advisor: Neva Specht
2012
John Aaron Akey, "Can We Be Saved? Edward Owings Guerrant and the Mission Movement on the Cumberland Plateau, 1861-1916"
Advisor: Bruce Stewart
Jason Linwood Hauser, "Agrarianism, Industry, the Environment, and Change: Gold Mining in Antebellum North Carolina, 1799-1860"
Advisor: Timothy Silver
Steven Michael Higley, "The Spanish Falange in Mexico during the Spanish Civil War"
Advisor: Jeff Bortz
Matthew Clay Holloway, "Foreign Debt and Economic Development: An Analysis of Financial Instability in Developing Economies"
Advisor: Jari Eloranta
Albert Brenton Lane, "Piscatorial Protestants: Angling, Religion, and Nature in Nineteenth-Century America"
Advisor: Timothy Silver
Allison Luthern, "'The Truth of It Is, She Has Her Reasons for Procreating so Fast': Maria Taylor Byrd's Challenges to Patriarchy in Eighteenth-Century Virginia"
Advisor: Sheila Phipps
Joseph W. Otto, "Subject to Overflow: the History of Drainage Districts in Jasper County, Iowa"
Advisor: Neva Specht
Rachel Lanier Roberts, "Great Women of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park: Defining Nature and the National Park Service"
Advisor: Timothy Silver
Carrie Anne Streeter, "'Let Me See Some Insane People': Progressive-Era Development of the State Hospital at Morganton, 1883-1907"
Advisor: Lucinda McCray
* Winner of Outstanding Thesis Award *
2011
Christopher Ryan Eklund, "'Making the Mountain Pay': Hugh Morton's Grandfather Mountain and the Creation of Wilderness"
Advisor: Timothy Silver
Adam Clay Griffey, "Dylan's Apocalypse: Country Music and the End of the World"
Advisor: James R. Goff
Daniel Adam Michalak, "Postmodernisms: A Provisional History, 1914-2010"
Advisor: Michael Behrent
Robert William Rennie, "The Problem of Ernst Heinkel: Nationalism and State Power in Early Twentieth Century German Aviation"
Advisor: Rennie Brantz
Susan Elizabeth Rivenbark, "'Ek Skal Hér Ráða': Themes of Female Honor in the Icelandic Sagas"
Advisor: Mary Valante
2010
Jamie Leanne Hager, "Towards of New History: Iredell County, North Carolina"
Advisor: Charles A. Watkins
Natalya Rachael Hopper, "Feedsack Fashion in Rural Appalachia: A Social History of Women's Experiences in Ashe County, North Carolina, 1929-1956"
Advisor: Neva Specht
Jeremy Land, "The Price of Empire: Britain's Military Costs during the Seven Years' War"
Advisor: Jari Eloranta
* Winner of Outstanding Thesis Award *
John Wyatt Martin, "'The Music That Belonged to Everybody': Tradition and Innovation in Western North Carolina Bluegrass"
Advisor: James R. Goff
Kevin David Oshnock, "The Isolation Factor: Differing Loyalties in the Mountain Counties of Watauga and Buncombe during the Civil War"
Advisor: Judkin Browning
Justin Paul Philbeck, "Auctoritas: Personal Authority in the Plays of Plautus and Terence"
Advisor: Lisa Holliday
Stella Jean Pierce, "Kitchen Cache: The Hidden Meaning of Gender and Cooking in Twentieth-Century American Kitchens"
Advisor: Sheila Phipps