• Constructing God’s Community: Umayyad Religious Monumentation in Bilad al-Sham, 640-743 CE 

  Lebovits, Nissim (Vanderbilt University. Dept. of History, 2020-04-20)

  In the early 7th Century CE, the Umayyad dynasty formed the first Islamic empire, marking a crucial moment in the emergence of Islam. As in many empires of Late Antiquity, religious monumentation played a central role in ...
• "The Hatay belongs to us": Defining Community in the Sanjak of Alexandretta, 1915-1940 

  Tezak, Mary E (Vanderbilt University. Dept. of History, 2020-04)

  In 1936, the Republic of Turkey and French-mandate Syria were at odds over the future of a province on the Turkish-Syrian border called the Sanjak of Alexandretta. This thesis explores the Turkish annexation of Alexandretta, ...
• Using the Living as Proxies in the Politics of the Dead: U.S. Grave Exhumation in the Soviet Zone of Germany, 1945-1953 

  Olson, Jacquelyn G. (Vanderbilt University, 2020-04-20)
• “The Shaft is in the Stone”: The Emergence of Confederate Memory through Early Monumentation in South Carolina, 1866-1904 

  McKenzie, Sarah-Anne (Vanderbilt University. Dept. of History, 2020-04-20)
• When Birds of a Feather Do Not Flock Together: The Failure of Democratic India and Democratic America to Ally During the Cold War 

  Reddy, Ramchandra (Vanderbilt University. Dept. of History, 2020-04-28)

  The global geopolitical history of the late 20th century was defined by the Cold War between the United States and the USSR, which through alliances, involved many countries across the world. Large swaths of the world ...
• The Path to War: Internal Motivation and Societal Influences in the First Crusade, 1095-1099 

  Morehead, Victoria (Vanderbilt University, 2019-04-24)

  On the 27th of November 1095, a large crowd watched and listened to the head of their Church. Prior to this moment, hundreds of Frankish nobles and ecclesiastical officials had gathered at the Council of Clermont in Auvergne, ...
• The Forgotten Crusaders: Western Missionaries in the Chinese Anti-Opium Movement 

  Guan, Tianyuan (Vanderbilt University. Dept. of History, 2019-04-30)

  As the most notorious drug in China, opium is repeatedly taught in school, and nearly all Chinese people could list its harmful effects. Yet instead of being taught in biology class as an addictive drug, it is introduced ...
• For My Children's Sake: Enslaved Women and the Idea of Home in Nineteenth-Century Tennessee 

  Robinson, Halee (Vanderbilt University. Dept. of History, 2019-05-01)

  “The dream of my life is not yet realized,” Harriet Jacobs declared in her 1861 narrative, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. After liberating herself from slavery and ensuring the freedom of her children, she authored ...
• Warring Worldviews on the Field of Honor in late Medieval Spain 

  Spence, Frank (Vanderbilt University, 2019-04-24)

  Around the start of the fifteenth century, Gutierre Díez de Games, standard bearer of the Castilian knight Don Pero Niño, wrote in his biographical chronicle of Niño about “How our Lord Jesus Christ desired for victors in ...
• The Muddled Middle Ground: Capturing the Grey Spaces between Collaboration and Resistance on the German Occupied Channel Islands, 1940-1945 

  Smith, Samantha C. (Vanderbilt University, 2019-04-29)

  The Channel Islands have been dogged with accusations of collaboration while other historians have rushed to their defense and sought to contextualize the Islanders actions in ways that emphasized their resistance. However, ...
• To Win the Hearts and Minds: The Combined Action program During the Vietnam War 

  Miller, Abigail (2019-04-29)

  On May 4, 1965, two months after the first Marines landed in Vietnam, Lyndon B. Johnson spoke at a dinner meeting with the Texas Electric Cooperatives, Inc. “So we must be ready to fight in Vietnam," he famously announced, ...
• Who Saved the Passenger Train? The Role of Public Advocacy in Amtrak's Creation: 1958 to 1971 

  Julian, Luke (2019-04-29)

  It was April 28th 1965, and the ballroom of the Biltmore Hotel in New York City was filled to capacity. Outside, successful stockbrokers and other well-dressed figures walked down the sidewalk in an orderly fashion holding ...
• Neglecting and Misrepresenting Latin America: Foreign Correspondents at the New York Times from 1966-1968 

  Huang, Christine (Vanderbilt University. Dept. of History, 2018)

  The Cold War dominated United States’ foreign policy in the Sixties. With the Cuban Revolution and the perceived Communist threat in Chile, among other events, Latin America also became a region of greater strategic ...
• National Health Insurance in an Age of Limits: Jimmy Carter’s Abandoned Agenda 

  Gwin, Mary (Vanderbilt University. Dept. of History, 2018)

  This thesis examines Jimmy Carter’s health policy in the context of declining New Deal liberalism. Although Carter had campaigned in 1976 on a platform that embraced national health insurance, a major unfinished goal of ...
• Missionary Girls’ Schools Yearbooks in Republican China: Navigating Youth, Gender and Nation, 1917-1948 

  Zhang, Jingyue (Vanderbilt University. Department of History, 2018)

  This thesis examines the yearbooks of two missionary girls’ secondary schools in Shanghai, the McTyeire School and St. Mary’s Hall, from 1917 to 1948. In response to the increasing Chinese nationalism, the female students ...
• “In Short, I am a West Indian": Planters, Performance, Anxiety, and Abolition in Georgian Britain 

  Rohall, Cameron (2018)

  Kathleen Wilson writes that the domestic elite of Georgian Britain sought a psychological "disavowal" of the West Indian planting class because elite flaws were reflected in the perceived degeneracy and excess of the ...
• “Detroit ‘Polar Bears’ in the Land of Lice and Snow: The American Soldier Experience in North Russia, 1918 – 1919” 

  Zellner, Jake (Vanderbilt University. Dept. of History, 2017-04-26)

  This thesis examines the experience of American soldiers serving in North Russia in 1918 – 1919, an expedition often referred to as an offshoot of World War One. It bases its conclusions by utilizing the comprehensive Polar ...
• “Jeffrey Sachs and the Costs of Capitalism. Shock Therapy in eastern European Transition Economies” 

  Markovich, Adam (Vanderbilt University. Dept. of History, 2017-04-20)

  This thesis examines economist Jeffrey Sachs’s implementation of shock therapy in transition economies from 1985-1994. Analysis begins with the foundation of the practice in Bolivia, and examines the changes in the approach ...
• “Benign Negligence: U.S.-South Korean Relations at the End of the Carter Administration” 

  Mangum, Anela (Vanderbilt University. Dept. of History, 2017-04-27)

  President Carter hoped to define his foreign policy on human rights and liberalization. With the removal of the longtime authoritarian leader, Park Chung Hee, the year 1979 presented an opportunity for democracy in South ...
• “ ‘The Best Laid Plans’: French and British Diplomatic Strategy in the Jacobite Rising of 1745” 

  Fuselier, Kathyrn (Vanderbilt University, 2017-04-26)

  This project analyses the Jacobite Rising of 1745 in an international context. In particular, the thesis looks at French involvement and promises of support for the Jacobites both before and throughout the first months of ...

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