Undergraduate Research

Undergraduate Research and Awards

Each year the Department of History awards a few scholarships and awards to its accomplished majors. These range from scholarships for promising students with established financial need to awards for excellent honors or 696 theses. Awards will be announced at our Annual Graduation ceremony, which takes place in May. In order to be considered for these scholarships and awards, you must be a history major and will need to submit an application. Some awards and scholarships require a statement or additional materials, as explained in the application form.

Are you a history major considering a summer research project? Or will you be somewhere where you could conduct historical research? We have some fantastic opportunities for funding that could benefit you!

The Undergraduate Research Initiative, created by the Department of History, provides small stipends to support research projects. These small grants, up to $150, could help to pay for gas to travel to an archive or a stay in a hotel in a location where you wish to conduct research, for example. Funding for research projects are available on a rolling basis: History Undergraduate Research Award Application.

We also encourage history majors to apply for undergraduate research awards from the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. Successful history majors have used these awards to conduct research for senior theses in locales as far flung as Africa and France, or closer to home in regional and national archives.

Honors Theses

The following Honors thesis projects were defended at the completion of the 2025-2026 academic year. Learn more about History Honors here.

• Anthony Alvarez Alonso, “Viva La Raza!: The Evolution of the Chicano Student Movement” | Thesis Advisor: Professor Neill Esquibel-Kennedy
  Anthony Alvarez Alonso is pictured here with his committee members (L-R): Neill Gabrielle Esquibel-Kennedy, Marie Grace Brown, Anthony Alvarez, and Robert Schwaller

  
   

• Colin Seth Baker, “Wasted Potential: The Misuse of U.S. Army Tanks in Vietnam” | Thesis Advisor: Professor Adrian Lewis
  Colin Baker is pictured here with his committee members (L-R): Nathan Wood, Marie Grace Brown, Colin Baker, and Adrian Lewis
  
   
• Emma Baker, “Justice in a Time of Crisis: The Trial of Mary Surratt and the Fragility of Constitutional Limits” | Thesis Advisor: Professor Sean Seyer
  Emma Baker is pictured here with her committee members (L-R): Sean Seyer, Emma Baker, Marta Vicente, and Sheyda Jahanbani
  
   
• Margaret Bhattarai, “The Doc Is In: An Examination of Irene Koeneke’s Success Within the Evolving Landscape of Professional Medicine” | Thesis Advisor: Professor Elaine Nelson
  Margaret Bhattarai is pictured here with her committee members (L-R): Megan Greene, Margaret Bhattarai, Elaine Nelson, and Marie Grace Brown
  
   
• Adrianna Brady, Thesis Title: ““Our Lands, Our Lands”: Armenian National Revival in the Soviet Union” | Thesis Advisor: Rebecca Johnston
  Adrianna Brady is pictured here with her committee members (L-R): Andrew Denning, Rebecca Johnston, and Nathan Wood
  
   
• Abraham Frederick, “‘And We’ll Bear the Glorious Stars of the Union and the Right’: Partisanship and the Political Officer among Union Commanders during Price’s 1864 Invasion of Missouri” | Thesis Advisor:Professor Adrian Lewis
  Abraham Frederick is pictured here with his committee members (L-R): Adrian Lewis, Abraham Frederick, Marie Grace Brown, and Noah Pinkham
  
   
• Lucas Rauscher, “The Downfall of Indian Kansas: Indigenous Removal in the Bleeding Kansas & Civil War Eras” | Thesis Advisor: Professor Andrew Isenberg
  Lucas Rauscher is pictured here with his committee members (L-R): Andrew Isenberg, Lucas Rauscher, Marie Grace Brown, and Robert Schwaller
  
   
• Kathryn Ryan Sauder, Thesis Title: “Welcome to Fairy Land: The Colleen Moore Fairy Castle, A Modern Museum in Miniature” | Thesis Advisor: Professor Rachel Schwaller
  Kathryn Ryan Sauder is pictured here with her committee members (L-R): Andrew Denning, Marta Vicente, Kathryn Ryan Sauder, and Rachel Schwaller 
  
   
• Jack Shaw, “White Eden: How J.C. Nichols Created Prairie Village” | Thesis Advisor: Professor Rachel Schwaller
  Jack Shaw is pictured here with his committee members (L-R): Christopher Forth, Rachel Schwaller, Jack Shaw, and Elizabeth MacGonagle
  
   
• Sophia Sierra, Thesis Title: “Building a Lie: How the Lost Cause Myth is Physically Memorialized in the United States” | Thesis Advisor: Professor Adrian Lewis
  Sophia is pictured here with her committee members (L-R): Adrian Lewis, Sophia Sierra, Elizabeth MacGonagle, and Marie Grace Brown
  
   

Past Honors Theses

2024-2025 Academic Year: 

• Runwa Karim Assaf,“Teaching the Lost-Found Nation: Identity Formation and the Fusion of Nationalism and Religion in the Nation of Islam’s Schools, 1960s-1975”| Thesis Advisor: Professor Shawn Alexander
• Levi Cromwell, “Quixote in the Classroom: The Rise and Fall of KU’s Integrated Humanities Program” | Thesis Advisor: Professor Jonathan Hagel
• Mallory Davisson, “A Great Mass of Depraved and Degenerate: The American Federation of Labor’s Fight to Restrict Immigration, Exclude Undesirables, and Keep Labor American in the 1920s” | Thesis Advisor: Professor David Farber
• Jackson Felix, “More Than Just Literature: Transcendentalism Off the Page” | Thesis Advisor: Professor Laura Mielke
• Connor Fenlon, Thesis Title: “From Foe to Friend: The Cinematic Redemption of the German Character in Hollywood, 1943-1955” | Thesis Advisor: Professor Beth Bailey
• Julia Harstick, “Vehement Vern Miller: A Narrative Approach to Understanding Anti-Drug Policies at the Local Level” | Thesis Advisor: Professor Beth Bailey
• Lola Niccum, “How to Become Beautiful: Advice from Seventeen in the 1950s” | Thesis Advisor: Professor Beth Bailey
• Madi Norris, Thesis Title: “Resistance in River City: The Counterculture and the Anti-War Movement in Lawrence, Kansas in the 1960s and 1970s” | Thesis Advisor: Professor Beth Bailey
• Caitlin Patterson, "Ad Astra Per Militum: The Transfer of the ABMA to NASA, 1958-1960” | Thesis Advisor: Professor Sean Seyer
• Brooke O. Peters, Thesis Title: "The Right to Marry: Civil Rights Lawyering’s Influence in Loving v. Virginia (1967) and the Question of Judicial Activism” | Thesis Advisor: Professor David Farber
• Natalie Pursche, “Sex and the Not So Single Girl: Presenting Fashion, Femininity and Sexuality in Helen Gurley Brown’s Cosmopolitan" | Thesis Advisor: Professor Beth Bailey
• Nataley Schumaker, “Negotiating a Hybrid Japanese American Identity: An Analysis of Cultural Celebrations in Internment Camp Newspapers” | Thesis Advisor: Professor Tiffany González 
• Ivy Watt, Thesis Title: “The Adaptive Monument: Authenticity and Adaptation in Notre Dame’s Post-Fire Revival” | Thesis Advisor: Professor Andrew Denning
  
  2023-2024 Academic Year: 
• Avery J. Amerio, “From Kansas to The Kremlin: Richard Nixon, Presidential Persuasion, and the Selling of Détente at Home and Abroad” | Thesis Advisor: Professor Sheyda Jahanbani
• Jude Butler, “More than a Sport: Early Developments of Baseball in Lawrence, Kansas” | Thesis Advisor: Professor Jonathan Hagel
• Khloe E. Crawshaw, “The Angel's Share: The History of the American Female Whiskey Drinker” |Thesis Advisor: Professor Jonathan Hagel
• Emily DeMars, “Sovereignty and Sobriety: The Intersection of Temperance, Statehood, and Disenfranchisement in Oklahoma.” | Thesis Advisor: Professor Kent Blansett
• Olivia G. Lara, “History, Memory, and Meaning: A Study of Enslaved Narratives from the Five Southeastern Tribes” | Thesis Advisor: Professor Kent Blansett
• Rachael A. Lawler, “The Tampons are not Alright: A Brief History” | Thesis Advisor: Professor Rachel Schwaller
• Hope Lynee McNeese, “A Stepping Stone to Internationalism: The Neutrality Act of 1937” | Thesis Advisor: Professor Andrew Isenberg
• Madison Needhamm, “Congregational Conversations: Exploring White Baptist Narratives on Racism During the Civil Rights Era” | Thesis Advisor: Professor Rachel Schwaller
• Jason Paul Oswald, "A Campus Mobilized for Deferments: Using ROTC to Avoid the Korean War Draft at the University of Kansas" | Thesis Advisor: Professor Beth Bailey
• Ethan Reiter, "John Spearman and John Brown: the Free State Identity and the Legacy of Unrest in Lawrence, KS in 1970" | Thesis Advisor: Professor Jonathan Hagel
• Benjamin A. Schluter, Thesis Title: “Wolves of the Great Father: Crow and Arikara Involvement in the Great Sioux War of 1876” | Thesis Advisor: Professor Kent Blansett

2022-2023 Academic Year: 

• Mason E. Clark, ““Meet the New Boss: ‘The Establishment’ in 1960s and 70s American Thought” | Thesis Advisor: Professor Sheyda Jahanbani
• Claire Ann Cox, “Decolonizing the Wakarusa Museum: The Role of Public Education and Forced Displacement Within the Settler Colonial Structure” | Thesis Advisor: Professor Kent Blansett
• Alexandra Haggar, “Rescind Era: The Failed Efforts in Kansas to Rescind Ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment, 1973-1980” | Thesis Advisor: Professor David Farber
• Noah Hookstra, "The Tent Is Never Big Enough: Exodusters, Suffragists, and the People’s Party” | Thesis Advisor: Professor Jonathan Hagel
• Austin J. Klinock, “Ad Astra Per Astronauta: Bringing the Public ‘Up to Space’ and Astronauts ‘Down to Earth’” | Thesis Advisor: Professor Sean Seyer
• Anna A. Madrigal, “Repatriation Beyond the Borderlands: The Impact of the Depression of 1921 on Kansas City’s Mexican Immigrants During the Great Depression” | Thesis Advisor: Professor Jonathan Hagel
• Nicolas Eric Pottorf, "All Is Vanity and Evanescence: Manifestations of Pure Land Buddhism Within ‘The Tale of Heike’” | Thesis Advisor: Professor Eric Rath
• Walter R. Sours, “A College Try: The People’s College of Fort Scott, Kansas” | Thesis Advisor: Professor Jonathan Hagel
• Brittney Madison Wilson, “Assault, Robbery, Mayhem: The Consequences of Fraternal Campus Loyalty Movements at
  the University of Kansas After World War I” | Thesis Advisor: Professor Nicholas Syrett
• Elizabeth G. Winkelman, “The Day After Tomorrow: Climate Change & The Today of Science, Film, & Activism” | Thesis Advisor: Professor Alex Boynton

2021-2022 Academic Year: 

• Jessica Blom, “The M*A*S*H ERA: Television and the Equal Rights Movement” (2021) | Thesis Advisor: 
• Abigail Byrd, "Directing Death: The Professionalization of Death Care in Urban Kansas' Black Communities" (2021) | Thesis Advisor: Professor Shawn Alexander
• Austin Childs, "'Civil Rights Divided: Geopolitics of Black Transnationalism and 'The Palestine Problem'" 
• Riana Simone Henderson, "The New Negro Woman: African-American Womanhood, Respectability, and Power in the Early Twentieth Century”  (2022) | Thesis Advisor: Professor Kim Warren
• Anna L. Jacobson, "Lead, Leases, and Lies: Land and Power on the Quapaw Reservation in the early 20th century" (2021)
• Morgan Kurtz, “The Luck of the Archives: An Examination of the Unusual Journey of the Colonel Hopkins Collection” (2022) | Thesis Advisor: Professor Marie Brown
• Caleb Luck, "Humanitarian Aid or Western Manipulation? Interpretations of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency in Jordan from 1979-1991" (2021) | Thesis Advisor: Professor Marie Brown
• Joseph M. Mirakian, “Questions, Answers, and the American Dream: A Cultural History of the Quiz Show” (2022) | Thesis Advisor: Professor Jonathan Hagel
• Mamie Lucille Murphy, “From Brick to Marble: Imperial Narrative and the Temple of Augustan Concord”  (2022) | Thesis Advisor: Professor Philip Stinson
• Katherine Taylor Price, “Empire, Authenticity, and Urban Imagination at the 1906 Marseille Colonial Exposition” (2022) | Thesis Advisor: Professor Andrew Denning
• Haylee Rose, “A Toast to Volstead: Neoliberal Hollywood’s Re-interpretation of the Great Depression in Gangster Films from 1980-2008” (2022) | Thesis Advisor: Professor Jonathan Hagel
• Kaman Simmons, "Climate, Clans, and Capitalism: Structural Change in Somalia Since Independence" (2021)
• Sloan Mae Sprau, “Towing the Line: The State of Minnesota’s Dichotomy as Both a Regulator and Promoter of Sportfishing” (2022) | Thesis Advisor: Professor Andrew Isenberg
• Logan Woodyard Stuart, "Agricultural Higher Education in China: A Mirror to the 20th Century's Shifting Political Landscapes" (2021)