Theses

2023

Balaam Sherrod, "Dragoon Bold: The Creation of an American Cavalry Tradition" (PDF not yet available)

Advisor: Judkin Browning

2022

Caleb Guenther, "The Vietnam War in the American Zeitgeist: A Study of the Vietnam War in Film" 

Advisor: Judkin Browning


Vincent Wolf, "The German Crucible: How the Imperial Systems of the Holy Roman Empire Fostered a Culture of Economic, Political, and Military Innovation during the Eighteenth Century" 

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 *


 Yuxiu Wu, "Nationalism Constructed Against 'Others': Chiapas's Anti-Chinese Movement and State Formation in Postrevolutionary Mexico"

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


Richard Jay Reid, "By Sword of Book: Strategies of Integration and Transformation on the Ming Dynasty's Nortwest Frontier--the Case of the Ningxia through the Lens of the Jiajing Gazetteer"

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