Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Face Value: Cosmetics As A Unit Of Historical Analysis, Sophie Durocher

Young Historians Conference

Cosmetics are a universal concept that have been inherent in society all throughout history. This paper explores four unique cultures from across the globe and their primary cosmetic of choice. A tube of lipstick from a Bronze Age Persian burial ground sheds light on the early uses and significance of lipstick in Ancient Persia. A compact of powdered pearls from China in the 11th century reveals the widespread importance of facial powder in China. The Maya applied paint and perfumes to denote social status and in ritual traditions, as evidenced by artwork and archaeological evidence. Ancient Egyptians famously painted their …

The Role Of Feline Goddesses In Advancing Women’S Rights In Ancient Egypt, Caitlin Moran

Young Historians Conference

The ancient Egyptians highly valued cats, worshipped female feline deities, and granted women more rights than other ancient civilizations. These three facts are widely acknowledged, but they have an intriguing link—and the key lies in the divine feline. This paper explores the extent to which ancient Egyptian feline goddesses, particularly Bastet, Sekhmet, and Mafdet, contributed to the treatment of women and their freedoms that surpassed those of women in other ancient civilizations. Examining historical records, religious artifacts, and scholarly journal articles, it illustrates how feline deities shaped gender dynamics in ancient Egypt. By analyzing the relationship between cats, feline deities, …

Oregon’S Compulsory Education Act: Americanism, Nativism, And Assimilation, Andrea M. Bell

Young Historians Conference

In 1922, Oregonians voted on and passed the Compulsory Education Act. Often referred to as the Oregon School Bill, this ballot initiative mandated public school education for children aged 8 to 16, creating a de-facto ban on private education in the state. While many states considered passing compulsory public education bills, and several managed to get the issue on the ballot, including Michigan in 1920 and Washington in 1924, only one state actually managed to pass such a bill through the electorate—Oregon. This paper explores how the School Bill and similar ballot initiatives reflected the nativist and anti-immigrant sentiments prevalent …

Teaching From Past Example: Various Interpretations Of Livy's Rape Of Lucretia, June Baeck

Young Historians Conference

The final kings of Rome were expelled in 509 B.C.E. after one of their princes raped a woman, driving her to end her own life. Pure and chaste, this woman was the utmost model of feminine virtue. Her death would bring great political change at the end of the sixth century B.C.E., but her story would be carried on and projected to provoke something similar for millennia. One significant driver of this was Titus Livius, who wrote of her in the first book of his Ab Urbe Condita, a history of Rome written c. 29 B.C.E. His account showcased …

The Roots Of Ethno-Political Strife In Ceylon: The Dividing Power Of British Colonialism, Audrey Francioch

Young Historians Conference

A bloody civil war has rocked Sri Lanka for decades, as the Sinhalese and Tamil populations fight each other for recognition, access, and control. Since the 1950s, each group has feared domination by the other, resulting in bitter battles on the ballots and in the streets to assert or retain power and subjugate the culture of the other. Each conflict perpetuates the vicious circle of retaliation and retribution through the generations, and the roots of this divide can be directly traced to the colonial occupation of the island in the 1800s. What began with the Dutch and became refined by …

Reflecting Life Back: The Influence Of Mirrors On Human World History, Helen F. Cruz-Uribe Bandstra

Young Historians Conference

Ten thousand years ago, humans first created mirrors. They were developed simultaneously all over the world, reflecting the innate human desire to see something so close to us, yet so hard to view. Our own face. While this invention had a simple initial purpose, it quickly became tied to many of the more complicated developments of human life, including, but not limited to, religion, power, and technology. We see this reflected in everything from the polished obsidian mirrors of Mesoamerica, used to commune with the gods and revered for their reflectiveness, to the bronze mirrors of Greece used in early …

The Essentials Of Creative Writing, Mitchell James

Journal of Creative Writing Studies

Review of Stephanie Vanderslice. Teaching Creative Writing: The Essential Guide. Bloomsbury, 2024. 175 pages.

Pedagogy And Practice In The Online Creative Writing Classroom, Grace Sikorski

Journal of Creative Writing Studies

Review of Tamara Girardi and Abigail G. Scheg, editors. Theories and Strategies for Teaching Creative Writing Online. Routledge, 2021. 165 pages.

Antidote, Sinicization, And Discipline Construction: Reading Hongbing Ge’S Theories Of Creative Writing Scholarship, Zhiyuan Chen, Weidong Liu

Journal of Creative Writing Studies

Review of Hongbing Ge, editor. Theories of Creative Writing Scholarship. Chinese Higher Education Press, 2020. 167 pages.

Those Who Did Teach, Mary Hedengren

Journal of Creative Writing Studies

Review of Writers and Their Teachers. Ed. Dale Salwak. Bloomsbury, 2023. 137 pages.

Creative Writing And The Common Core, Nathaniel Drenner

Journal of Creative Writing Studies

Review of Imaginative Teaching Through Creative Writing: A Guide for Secondary Classrooms. Edited by Amy Ash, Michael Dean Clark, and Chris Drew. Bloomsbury, 2021.

Informed Practices And Resources For Facilitating Community-Based Writing Groups, Cassandra M. Normand

Journal of Creative Writing Studies

Community-based writing groups have been found to positively impact attendees’ well-being; however, little research examines informed practices that beginning group facilitators can utilize to facilitate groups. This study interviewed 23 professionals from across the U.S. and compiled main themes for effectively facilitating writing groups. The four themes are as follows: 1). Creating a brave, caring atmosphere is key, 2). Networking is critical, 3). There are individual, group, and organizational challenges, 4). Understanding the facilitator’s role is essential. Through an in-depth discussion of themes, the researcher encourages others to start their own writing groups in their communities.

The Dx7 Of Literature? Creative Writing In The Age Of Genai, Laura Valeri

Journal of Creative Writing Studies

Abstract:

This paper examines the impact of artificial intelligence on contemporary literature, focusing on how writers are incorporating AI into their creative processes. Through case studies of avant-garde artists, mainstream literary authors, and genre fiction writers, the study explores various approaches to AI collaboration in writing. The analysis reveals that while AI offers new possibilities for artistic expression, it also presents ethical challenges and potential threats to traditional notions of authorship. The paper concludes by discussing the implications of AI in creative writing education, emphasizing the need for a balanced approach that embraces technological advancements while preserving the human element …

Deconstructing The Cradle Of Literature: An Application Of Pierre Bourdieu’S “Field” Theory To The Studies Of Literary Subjectivity And Local Creative Writing, Gabriel F. Y. Tsang

Journal of Creative Writing Studies

Different from Northrop Frye, who intends to terminate literary discussions by stressing archetypical analysis, Pierre Bourdieu attracts many interdisciplinary attempts upon his scientific methodology. Although he rarely centralizes the internal value of literature, as he did in an exceptional commentary on Guillaume’s poetry by adopting conventional judgments (descriptive, rhetoric, narrative, and stylistic), his sociological delineation of the objective and habitual mechanism of the literary field and the possibility of change oriented by personal dispositions strikingly reveals a new integrative way to understand the dynamic process of literary formation. Adding Merleau-Ponty phenomenology of perception and perspective of communicative externalization to Bourdieu’s …

"Integrating The Seven Stages Of Conocimiento With Nahuatl And Ralámuri Wisdom In Kosmic Feminism: My Creative Writer Identity.", Hilda Yaneth Sotelo Dr

Journal of Creative Writing Studies

This paper explores the intersection of Kosmic Feminism and the seven stages of conocimiento as outlined by Gloria Anzaldúa, integrating Indigenous wisdom from Nahuatl and Ralámuri traditions. It examines how decolonial thought, feminist theory, and creative writing can be transformative tools for personal and communal healing. Drawing on personal experiences rooted in the borderlands of Ciudad Juárez-El Paso and Rarámuri heritage, the author blends Anzaldúa’s framework of conocimiento with Indigenous perspectives to offer a critique of patriarchal systems and a vision of holistic, cosmic resistance. The seven stages of conocimiento—awakening (El Arrebato), liminality (La Nepantla), commitment (El Compromiso), healing (La …

Crip Queer Storytelling: An Intersectional Analysis, Audrey T. Heffers

Journal of Creative Writing Studies

Abstract

Where are queer disabled characters, and how do they avoid tokenization? This particular approach will use the following criteria as its foundation:

1) The story has a character who is both disabled and queer. (This must be explicit in some way and not ambiguously coded within the text, or solely paratextual.)

2) The character is central to the narrative. (If the character were removed, would the story change significantly?)

3) The story can be affected by disability, but (with due respect to making space for such stories) the story isn’t solely/centrally about disability/overcoming ableism.

The hope with these criteria …

From Prison Cells To Parliament: How The H-Block Hunger Strikes Transformed Sinn Féin To Enable Peace In Northern Ireland, Madeleine E. Wallenberg

Young Historians Conference

The 1988 Good Friday Agreement signed in Belfast is regarded as a landmark feat of diplomacy. Allowing for a non-violent redistribution of power, the Good Friday Agreement marked the end of a nearly thirty-year period of violence known as The Troubles. The efficacy of this agreement relied on the participation of members of the I.R.A. and Sinn Féin, something that likely would not have happened if not for a 1981 Hunger Strike that changed the public’s perception of the Irish Republican movement and launched the platform for Sinn Féin as a legitimate political organization. This paper explores the development of …

The Color Of Society: A History Of Textile Dyes, Tess L. Nestel

Young Historians Conference

This paper will examine how textile dyes have been linked to cultural status and hierarchy throughout history. The colors of clothing have long served as outward expressions of wealth and power due to the rarity of natural dyes. With a limited range of colors, each hue became symbolic and took on specific meanings. In China, a strict color code was enforced, with the emperor wearing the most important color; in the Byzantine Empire tyrian purple became the hallmark of royalty and power. Beginning in the 15th century, colonization opened up extensive trade routes that introduced American cochineal and created a …

The Confluence Of Millenarianism And Sabbateanism In The Seventeenth-Century Netherlands, Madison J. Alexander

Young Historians Conference

The seventeenth century was a time of religious tension and a spike in apocalyptic rhetoric across not only the European continent, but also the Middle East and North Africa. Shabbatai Tzvi, a false Messiah based in the Ottoman Empire, promoted his own divine nature along with his subversive rewriting of Jewish law. Tzvi gained traction by capitalizing on the belief among persecuted Jewish communities worldwide that the Jews were soon to be redeemed; Protestants, facing their own predicted end-of-days in 1666, found commonalities in this theology. In a Netherlands newly free from Spain’s Catholic rule, Amsterdam boasted some of the …

Form Follows Function: An Analysis Of De Architectura And Its Influence, Weston Klein

Young Historians Conference

Over 2000 years ago, the Roman architect and engineer, Marcus Vitruvius Pollio, scribed De Architectura, a multi-volume work unearthed in the 15th century, in St. Gallen, Switzerland. As the only surviving architectural source from antiquity, the book has been indispensable in the study of Greco-Roman architecture, positioning Vitruvian and Greco-Roman architectural concepts in many ways as one in the same. Additionally, Vitruvian ideas, as expressed in De Architectura, regarding architectural form, materials, location, and process have been foundational to the evolution of Western architecture. This paper explores De Architectura’s impact on Western architectural theory and practice spanning the Early Middle …

Shanghai's Stateless Immigrants: Anti-Bolshevik Russians In Shanghai From 1917-1949, Anna E. Roberts

Young Historians Conference

Following the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, thousands of anti-Bolshevik (commonly referred to as White Russians) fled to the city of Shanghai. Shanghai’s status as a free port with very few strict immigration laws facilitated their arrival and allowed them to reside within the city's foreign settlements. The city's complexities and the Russians' status within the city also exposed them to vulnerabilities, including poverty, discrimination, and the eventual geopolitical shifts that led to their ultimate displacement. Despite the issues that many faced, White Russians contributed to Shanghai’s cultural and economic life, opening up schools, religious institutions, businesses, and newspapers that maintained …

Cuadros De Casta: A Pseudo-Scientific Means Of Control And Racial Taxonomy In Colonial Mexico, Lucita Ocaña Dessen

Young Historians Conference

Casta paintings of 18th century Mexico are a prime example of an art form mixed with political propaganda, as the 4x4 style paintings depicted over a dozen racial mixings in one painting. Created by Mexican artists for the viewing of Spanish elites, Casta paintings helped to establish the racial hierarchy that continues to be embedded into Latin American society. This paper seeks to determine to what degree Casta paintings served as hierarchical means of Christian, Enlightenment-era colonial control.

Part of the panel: Picturesque and Problematic
Moderator: Professor Jennifer Tappan

The Not-So-Great Result Of America’S Greatest Idea: How Indigenous Americans Were Affected By The Creation Of Yellowstone, Glacier, And Yosemite National Parks, Tess Larson

Young Historians Conference

Since the mid-19th century, America’s government has been working to locate the nation’s places of stunning natural beauty and preserve them for the public. This has led to the preservation of 63 National Parks across the country—said to be “America’s Best Idea.” However, these lands for centuries were inhabited by Indigenous Americans. This paper studies the early stages of three National Parks—Yellowstone, Yosemite, and Glacier—and examines the original values they were founded on. It then identifies the tactics the US government used to negotiate or steal this land from indigenous tribes. Finally, it analyzes the further exploitation of Indigenous Americans …

“Knowing With” The Unknowable Woman: The Body As Protest In Han Kang’S The Vegetarian, Abigail Worthington

The Compass

During an interview from 2020, South Korean writer Han Kang pointed to the “impossible riddle” of humanity as the reason she finds it so difficult to look at human beings without becoming overwhelmed.1 She acknowledged that while humans have committed horrific atrocities against one another, we also possess a certain dignity which suggests that we have a desire for goodness within us. As a countermeasure to the distress and hopelessness that we may feel as a result of this dichotomy, Han proposes that “[when] we are confronted by the horror of humanity, we have to question ourselves that [sic] what …

“His Better Half”: Hindley And Heathcliff As Social Foils In Emily Brontë’S Wuthering Heights, Bethany Rozario Steinhagen

The Compass

Critical analyses of Emily Bronte’s Victorian classic Wuthering Heights often portray Hindley Earnshaw, Catherine’s older brother, as a mere analog to the Brontes’ own older brother Branwell. This paper claims that Hindley’s character is not only far more developed than commonly assumed, but that he is also integral to the development of Heathcliff becoming Heathcliff himself. Both men’s journeys can further be seen as parallel methods of navigating rigid Victorian social expectations. This analysis explores the foil relationship between these two men, who can both be described as each other’s ‘better half,’ shining a new light not only on the …

Archival Presence Of The Queer Experience: An Analysis Of Power In Information Management, Emmett Myers

The Compass

“Who controls the past, controls the future; controls the present, controls the past.”1 Archives, places in which historical records are kept, play a role in controlling the past, future, and present of society. Exploring archives and their relationship with power and authority allows us to understand their impact on documenting intersectional identities, especially those of the LGBTQ+ community. In this paper, I will examine the presence of the LGBTQ+ community within archival spaces, analyze literature regarding the three main principles of archival theory, and offer a new model for a more inclusive and queer framework for archival theory. My research …

35th Annual Young Historians Conference Program, Portland State University History Department, Portland State University Challenge Program

Young Historians Conference

This is the 2025 Young Historians Conference schedule and abstracts.

Slavic Influences In The Soviet Adaptation Of The Fellowship Of The Rings, Martina Juričková

Journal of Tolkien Research

In 1991 Leningrad TV published a dramatization miniseries based on the first volume of The Lord of the Rings, entitled Khraniteli (Хранители). Unfortunately, due to the turbulent political situation in the Soviet Union at that time, the series was only televised once, the idea of making sequels based off the other two volumes abandoned, and the whole project fell into oblivion until 2021, when the sucessor of Lenigrad TV uploaded Khraniteli to its youtube channel. Naturally, this aroused a lot of commotion among Tolkien fans who, comparing it to the better known Jackson’s adaptation, found it funny and ridiculous. This …

Colonial Waste And Liminal Space: A Look Behind The Muhlenberg General Store, Ciara S. Chagnon

Anthropology Honors Papers

The following project includes both a comprehensive site report on the archaeological field school hosted by Ursinus College and Historic Trappe in the summer of 2024, as well as spatial representations and analysis of colonial window glass distribution over the excavation units. Descriptions of the results of this archaeological investigation aim to expand on the body of knowledge concerning the Muhlenberg general store and the Speaker’s House property where the field school was conducted. An exploration of liminality and archaeological boundaries provides a lens into the structural nature of the general store zone as well as its colonial-era functions. In-depth …

Bars, Barristers, And Bias: A Content Analysis Of Legal Plays, Evan Chartock

Media and Communication Studies Honors Papers

This content analysis paper investigates the portrayal of the legal profession onstage within legal dramas first performed in the twenty-first century. There has been no previous research that has focused on a comprehensive analysis of the specific content of legal dramas, so this study is exploratory in nature. This study emphasizes the importance of learning about the content characteristics of legal plays and legal characters. This content analysis seeks to answer two research questions. First, do playwrights of legal plays first performed between 2000-2024 belong to similar identity demographics, write about similar content, and/or have similar messaging regarding the notion …