History Commons^™

Leprosy: How It Defined A King, Paul Sanders

Undergraduate Research Symposium

This project is looking at King Baldwin IV of Jerusalem and his successes despite contracting leprosy at an early age. There was a general mistrust in Europe against lepers because of what the majority of Christians thought leprosy was caused by. King Baldwin had many military and political victories while dealing with the physical effects of leprosy and the stigma surrounding it at the time.

Vasily Grossman And Ilya Ehrenburg: Soviet Jews On The Nazis And Soviets, Joshua Heisel

Undergraduate Research Symposium

Vasily Grossman and Ilya Ehrenburg were both significantly influential writers in the Soviet Union during and after World War II. Grossman and Ehrenburg were both Jewish war correspondents and witnessed Nazi war crimes. Prosecutors at the Nuremberg Trial used The Hell of Treblinka, written by Grossman, as evidence. Following the war, Joseph Stalin and the Soviet Union began to implement increasingly anti-Semitic policies. Jewish citizens faced discrimination, the Soviet state opposed “dividing the dead” of World War II, and it culminated in the Jewish Doctors Plot in 1953. Both writers covered extensively the Holocaust and how to treat Germany after …

Putin's Russia: Lineage Of Totalitarianism, Micah Hillier

Undergraduate Research Symposium

Vladimir Putin is the current president of Russia and has taken many leadership cues from his country’s totalitarian past. Does Putin fit the mold of a classic 20^th century totalitarian when one looks at examples like Hitler, Stalin, Mao, or the Kim dynasty? In what ways does Putin exhibit the telltale personality traits of these dictatorships? How does the current Russian administration’s policies, both foreign and domestic, mirror those of other authoritarian and totalitarian regimes?

The presentation will be a panel style discussion where these questions will be discussed and debated with research backed conclusions. Using historical examples of …