History Commons^™

The Grizzly, May 7, 2026, Renee Washart, Sidney Belleroche, Dylan Mchugh, Andrew Mihniak, Adam Denn, Cassidy Denning

Ursinus College Grizzly Newspaper, 1978 to Present

Ursinus College Announces Shifts to Berman Museum • Ursinus Food Pantry: Coming Soon? • Students Learn From MLS Senior Director of Social Media Dan Stelly • Theater Department Presents Independent Capstone Production • Renee Washart Signing Off! • Adam Denn Signing On! • Sidney Belleroche Signing On! • AI: Humanity's Silent Killer • UC Sports Network Returns In Full Force • Ursinus Baseball's Miracle Run Comes to a Close

Penitential Systems In The Latin West And Byzantine East, Elijah C. Dodson

Honors Theses

This thesis examines the development and organization of penitential discipline in early medieval Christianity through a comparison of the penitential tradition associated with Theodore of Canterbury in the Latin West and the canons attributed to John the Faster in the Byzantine East. The study focuses on how these texts regulated sexual sin and what their structures reveal about the institutional role of the Church in different historical contexts. The analysis is based on a comparative reading of penitential texts, supported by patristic writings and modern scholarship. By examining how specific categories of sexual misconduct are classified and disciplined, this study …

A Weapon Waiting To Be Used: The Strategic Importance Of The Women Airforce Service Pilots Of World War Ii, Piper Hanson

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

The Women Airforce Service Pilots, or WASP, were a group of women pilots who worked in a civilian capacity with the United States Army Air Force (USAAF) during World War II. The air war in both Europe and the Pacific Theaters was extremely deadly with high casualty rates, and the USAAF struggled to train new aircrews. Established in 1943, the WASP program aimed to free male pilots on the home front for combat duties by allowing women pilots to take over non-combat roles. WASPs ferried military planes from manufacturers to bases, test-piloted damaged or dangerous aircraft, and trained military personnel …

Unmaking And Remaking Crimean Tatar Identity Stalin’S Deportation, Sürgün Stories, And The Claiming Of Indigeneity, Milo A. Clarkson

International Studies Honors Projects

The Crimean Tatars exist within a framework of historical and modern Russian settler colonial oppression. By examining their preferred form of identification, this thesis argues that claiming indigeneity holds promise for combating this colonial structure. Further, it identifies the construction of collective memories of the Sürgün (1944 deportation of the Crimean Tatars) in virtual museum project Tamirlar’s oral histories as a form of discursive decolonization—the reclamation of cultural, linguistic, and historical representation and primacy on the land. Novel analysis of fifty interviews with Sürgün survivors preserves indigenous Crimean identity and challenges the retrospective settler colonial construction of Crimea as “Russian.”

“We Have Not Failed Our Country In The Past; We Shall Not Fail Her In The Future.”: The Army National Guard In Peace And War During The Interwar Period And World War Ii, Bearington C. Curtis

Dissertations

This dissertation explores one of the most fundamental questions in the War & Society field of American history: how the American people organize for war and how the citizenry has negotiated with themselves and their government to formulate a compromise that is culturally acceptable and militarily practical. Addressing such an elemental yet sweeping question of how a society organizes for war necessitates engagement with a broad swath of historiography, including institutional history, traditional and new military history, cultural assumptions of race and masculinity, politics, and civil-military relations. By taking a holistic approach, the various interests that shaped American military policy …

“Thou Shalt Not Die”: The Evolution Of Vampires From Medieval Europe To The 21st Century, Maryn A. Tucker

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Medieval ideas about vampires continue to influence portrayals of them in modern media. Although modern vampires are portrayed with more powers and abilities than their medieval counterparts, the categories of traits remain consistent. This paper makes these points by using five characteristics (creation, physical characteristics, relationship to blood, social life, and death/weakness) to examine the evolution of vampires from Medieval European lore to modern day media. The sources examined range from the 13^th century to 2017. From the Medieval era through 1897, vampire characteristics changed little. Bram Stoker’s Dracula marks the first major change in vampire characteristics and provides …

They Returned Fighting: World War I, Disillusionment, And The Remaking Of African-American Political Life In New York City, Michael Frank

Theses and Dissertations

They Returned Fighting examines how Black New Yorkers used World War I service, wartime activism, and postwar protest to press claims to citizenship and democracy, even as racial violence, discrimination, and contested public memory exposed the limits of that belonging in New York City and the United States.

House Of Ill-Fame: A Historical, Cartographic, And Archaeological Study On The Spatial Evolution Of Commercial Sex Work In New Orleans, 1875 – 1925, Austin Roebuck

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

This research examines the historic spatiality of commercial sex‑work in New Orleans by analyzing targeted addresses associated with the trade across three census years. Using the establishment and closure of Storyville (1897–1917) as a temporal frame, it compares demographic patterns in dwellings labeled as “houses of ill fame” in 1880, 1900, and 1920 to trace changes in household composition and social identity. Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps, newspapers, and city directories contextualize these patterns within three ten‑year intervals (1875–1885, 1895–1905, 1915–1925), revealing how sex‑work spaces were regulated, represented, and embedded in the urban landscape. The study also incorporates an archaeological assemblage …

The Geography Of Race: A Spatial Analysis Of Free People Of Color In The City Of Charleston (1790-1861), Alexandra Ullman

All Theses

In Charleston, South Carolina, for all but one year from 1790 to 1860, the enslaved and free Black population outnumbered that of the white. Through manumission, the process of an enslaved person gaining their freedom, the free Black population grew substantially and reached a peak in South Carolina during the nineteenth century. This large community of free people of color (FPOC), shifted the social climate by upsetting the balance of white power, thus increasing racial conflict, tension, and legislation that aimed to control the movement of FPOC.

Despite FPOC comprising a significant portion of the total population of Charleston, there …

Women In The Chancery Court Of Maryland From 1669 To 1679, Emily A. Cole

All Theses

This project examines women who appeared in the Chancery Court of Maryland from 1669 to 1679. This thesis used the Archives of Maryland Online and the volume of proceedings of the Chancery Court. Across the three chapters, I argue that historians have largely ignored these proceedings, and that women did not appear in court out of empowerment but rather out of legal duty and requirement. I examined how these women appeared in both their legal status and the types of positions they held. This included the life cycle women typically followed from wife to widow to remarriage. They also appeared …

Disney's Illusion Of Inclusion, Marissa Davis

All Theses

Walt Disney’s films were not simply entertainment, but a use of racial stereotypes as a profit strategy. Even scholarship that explores these tactics and critically analyzes his most problematic misrepresentations do not to consider the role of Walt Disney, as a man, in creating and promoting these narratives. These depictions, while somewhat in line with the culture when he first entered the business, failed to evolve as society changed. Rather, they were deliberate choices to attract white audiences and increase revenue.

Over time, these tropes became socially unacceptable, yet Disney maintained them for public consumption. While Disney and his company …

Prevalence Of And Hindrances To Abolitionism In Buffalo And Erie County, 1830-1860, Lauren V. Kausner

History Theses

When Americans think of abolition and abolitionists, they most likely think of Frederick Douglass, William Lloyd Garrison or Harriet Tubman. Those names are associated with New England and Rochester, New York. Many accounts of abolitionism mention Buffalo, but only in passing. As a terminus on the Underground Railroad, Buffalo was on the route to freedom in Canada and played a vital role in the nation’s journey towards eliminating slavery. This thesis endeavors to discover the depth of abolitionist tendencies in Buffalo by looking at specific individuals and events between 1830 and 1860. There were politicians and trends that most likely …

The Grizzly, April 30, 2026, Renee Washart, Alex Zelaya, Erik Groff, Cassidy Denning, Andrew Mihniak, Adam Denn, Erin Ewing, Dylan Mchugh

Ursinus College Grizzly Newspaper, 1978 to Present

Meet the Language Fellows • The Rocky Horror Picture Show: A BSP Classic • The Fitness Court • What is Greek Week? • In Case You Missed the URSPYs • Pick a Straw: Sustainable or Gluten-Free • Ursinus Track Gears Up for Champs • Ursinus Women's Golf Faces Uncertain Future

(Review Of) Monica Ciobanu And Mihaela Șerban, Eds. Between The Memory And Post-Memory Of Communism In Romania: Fluid Memories, Stefan Cristian Ionescu

History Faculty Articles and Research

A review of Monica Ciobanu and Mihaela Șerban's Between the Memory and Post-Memory of Communism in Romania: Fluid Memories.

Roundtable, Stefan Cristian Ionescu

History Faculty Articles and Research

"Many thanks to the editors of the Journal of Romanian Studies, Mihaela Șerban and Narcis Tulbure for organizing this roundtable focused on my recent book—Justice and Restitution in Post-Nazi Romania: Rebuilding Jewish Lives and Communities, 1944–1950—in this prestigious journal! I am extremely honored and grateful for the opportunity to respond to the insightful and interdisciplinary comments on my book from reputed scholars in the field of Romanian studies, Emanuela Grama, Grant T. Harward, Irina Livezeanu, and Mihaela Șerban."

An Alignment Of Absences: The Medicalization Of Death And Its Implications On Archaeological Methodology, Makayla J. Bowman

Departmental Honors & Graduate Capstone Projects

Absence describes something that is "expected, wanted, or looked for [but] is not present or does not exist," (Merriam-Webster Dictionary 2026). The archaeological discipline interacts with absence in many profound ways, largely in its study of the past dead. This paper focuses on the ways in which the medicalization of death has influenced, limited, and misaligned archaeological methodology, and how the result of those methodologies produces archaeological analysis that is absent of or misrepresents our understanding of life, personhood, and our position within a greater, interconnected biosphere. Thus, I present an anthropological critique of the ways in which death and …

The Brethren In China: Cross-Cultural Relationships Within An Imperial Structure, Sebastian S. Kochall

History and Political Science Student Scholarship

No abstract provided.

One Of These Things Is Not Like The Other: Differences Between The New Deal And Great Society, Brayden T. Gallagher

Harding Undergraduate Research Conference

This paper examines the differences between the New Deal of Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Great Society of Lyndon B. Johnson, challenging the prevailing interpretation that the latter administration was the logical continuation of the former. Through comparative historical analysis of policy and rhetoric, the research finds that, despite clear similarities such as expanded government involvement and social welfare programs, the two initiatives diverged significantly. The New Deal prioritized economic recovery through short-term job creation while often tolerating or reinforcing racial inequality. In contrast, the Great Society directly confronted systemic racism and struck at the roots of poverty through education, …

The Grizzly, April 16, 2026, Renee Washart, Adam Denn, Sidney Belleroche, Cassidy Denning, Dylan Mchugh, Erin Ewing, Erik Groff

Ursinus College Grizzly Newspaper, 1978 to Present

Graml Announced as President • Ursinus Dance Program Shift • Paige Dickerman '28 Receives St. Andrews Scholarship • Strusowski's Second Year Surge • From Player to Coach: Ursinus Alum Ryan DiVergilis • Opinion: The Missing LINQs • Ursinus Golf Swings for Improvement in 2026 • Ursinus Tennis Teams Tear Through Non-Conference Play

Hotels As Placemakers In Downtown Los Angeles, 1890-1950, Chrissie Alea Rensing, Megan Kendrick

Seaver College Research And Scholarly Achievement Symposium

Early twentieth-century Los Angeles is often characterized as a rapidly expanding metropolis shaped by informal segregation along lines of race, class, and gender. Yet within this landscape, hotels and lodging houses sometimes functioned as unexpected sites of inclusion and community for marginalized populations. This project investigates how these spaces of hospitality served women and racial minorities between 1890 and 1950 in Los Angeles. Drawing from recent scholarship from Natalia Molina and others, we set out to examine the role of vernacular hotel architecture and the “placemakers” who operated them.

The project involved examining hundreds of handwritten census pages and original …

The Grizzly, April 9, 2026, Renee Washart, Sidney Belleroche, Erin Ewing, Andrew Mihniak, Jesse Cherone, Ava Wood

Ursinus College Grizzly Newspaper, 1978 to Present

Third Annual Lenape Symposium • Watson Fellowship: What to Know • Join The Grizzly Newspaper! • Ursinus Hosts Girls & Women in Sports Day • Sexual Assault Awareness Month • Opinion: I Hate Cashless Everything • Baseball Blasts Out to Hot Start! • Softball's Young Talent Shines Through

Where Do Policy Demanders Come From? Protestants And Party Formation In The Antebellum Period, John W. Compton

Political Science Faculty Articles and Research

The early 1830s were years of intense religious fervor, when well-organized moral reform movements seemed destined to remake the political landscape. Curiously, however, the party system that emerged from this period was premised on the exclusion of moral issues from party politics. How did the early Jacksonian Democrats and Whigs manage to construct an essentially amoral party system during a decade marked by large-scale moral reform movements? And why did the resulting system unravel in the mid-1850s? Answering these questions requires shifting the focus from party activists and elected officials to organized religion. Specifically, I show that the nation's largest …

Belle Époque French Fashion: Understanding French Clothing Labels In Historical American Media, Meg E. Smith

Scholars Week

A period of French prosperity know as the Belle Epoque followed the Franco-Prussain War from 1871-1914. Within this time, Parisian Fashion would blossom and flourish with couturiers, fashion designers, rising in fame and influence within textile and clothing markets. Credit to this prosperity can be given to the second industrial revolution, the end of a long depression, and a dominating industry of luxury market goods production in tandem with a sharp increase in foreign trade. Foreign media, such as American newspapers, would display the array of reactions to the success of Parisian styles. Retail progression and the commercialization of leisure …

The Grizzly, April 2, 2026, Renee Washart

Ursinus College Grizzly Newspaper, 1978 to Present

This is an April Fool's parody edition of the Ursinus College Grizzly newspaper entitled "The Goofly."

Res Historica, Volume 5, Alpha Rho Epsilon Phi Alpha Theta, Lindsay Rae Smith Privette Phd

Res Historica

The 2026 journal of historical research by Anderson University students, Res Historica.

The editorial team for this edition of Res Historica was Dr. Lindsay Rae Smith Privette, Julia Ackerman, Callyn Wright, Logan Davis, and John Hinton. Cover art by Mary Beth Lee.

Spanglish: Un Viaje Al Pasado Observado Por El Presente, Nyleen Benavides, Raquel Christopherson, Rose Jouini, Kennedy Kuchta

Posters - 2026

Since its founding in 1852, St. Mary’s University has evolved from a small institution into a diverse and inclusive community that has worked to overcome discriminatory barriers. Originally founded to serve Mexican students in underserved communities, the university has reflected San Antonio’s Cultural diversity since its earliest years. Its founder, Reverend John Marie Odin, envisioned supporting a “melting pot” of cultures within the city (Flores, 2019). While the university has grown significantly in enrollment, Hispanic culture and traditions have remained a central part of its identity. Today, with over two thousand students enrolled, St. Mary’s University continues to not only …

Made In Ireland: A Postcolonial Analysis Of Irish Cultural Revival And Its Impact On Ireland’S International Relations, Emma Boyd

Political Science Student Papers and Posters

This thesis examines the impact of how British colonial rule led to the decline of Irish cultural components, such as Gaelic (Gaeilge), and how postcolonial revival efforts have shaped Ireland’s modern identity and its use of soft power in international relations. Drawing on mobilization and postcolonial theories, this paper defines key concepts, mobilization, remobilization, and postcolonial identity, to provide an analytical foundation. The analysis explores how colonial policies eroded Irish culture and language, intensified by the Great Famine, and how the Irish Diaspora serves as a global network for remobilizing Irish identity abroad. The ongoing conflicts in Northern Ireland will …

Stakhanov Lives Forever: How Art And Culture Outlasted Politics In The Communist World, Samuel Shewmake

Calvert Undergraduate Research Awards

The Stakhanovite movement and its long term consequences has been heavily debated in the field of Soviet history for several decades. The dominant scholarly narrative is that the Stakhanovite movement and Stakhanovism were largely extinguished during the period following the buildup to the Second World War. Previous works have relied heavily on solely political analysis of the movement, presuming that its character was primarily state-driven with little social component. This paper analyzes the social and artistic legacy of the Stakhanovite movement through novel analysis of film, music, and art of the Stakhanovite period and following decades. Contrary to what has …

Libertatis Cunabula: Slavery In San Antonio, Makayla Hernandez

Posters - 2026

This research on the taxes collected by our city and county exposes the pervasiveness of slavery in San Antonio. This truth is shockingly new for San Antonio. No marker nor plaque nor historical commemoration exists to honor the memory and contributions of enslaved San Antonians, nor to force a reckoning with the legacy of prominent enslavers among San Antonio’s leading families and Alamo heroes. This research project recovers every person listed as enslaved in the Bexar County Tax Assessment Records from 1837 to 1862 and names their enslavers. It immediately counters the assumption and assertion that slavery was insignificant in …

Remembering In The North: How The Civil Rights Movement Is Told Through Monuments, Courtney Wight

History & Classics Undergraduate Theses

This thesis, titled “Remembering in the North: How the Civil Rights Movement is Told Through Monuments,” examines how the Civil Rights Movement is remembered in the North through public monuments. The Civil Rights Movement in the North has not received the same level of recognition compared to the South in public memory, yet the stories and activists in the North deserve the same acknowledgement. The cities of Newark, NJ, and Albany, NY, act as case studies to illustrate how the racism and discrimination, which prompted the Civil Rights Movement, were present in the North during the movement. Both cities, like …