The thirteenth publication of Davidson History Journal includes work from the Fall 2024 semester. The editorial staff would like to thank Davidson’s History Department and all student contributors. Research projects are organized by course level, with increasing difficulty, and are listed alphabetically within each category.
100-Level Research Projects
Reassessing Reagan’s Legacy: The True Beginning of Mass Incarceration in America. Written by Sophie Lymberis and edited by Eammon Choukrane.
This paper explores the history of the U.S criminal justice system by re-evaluating President Reagan’s complicated legacy as it pertains to American crime policy. The paper re-centers this history in the Johnson administration, tracing how many of Reagan’s policies stemmed from an earlier period.
The Past, Present and Future of Pan-Africanism. Written by Tanaka Makoni and edited by Claire Haile.
I Disagree: [Iran]-Contra Affair. Written by Quentin Neaderland and edited by Sofia Cimballa.
The Inclusion and Exclusion of African American Women in the Women’s Suffrage Movement. Written by Claire Orvis and edited by Ethan Tran.
The women’s suffrage movement, often celebrated as a triumph of gender equality, was marked by the systematic exclusion of African American women. Yet African American advocates like Sojourner Truth and Frances Ellen Watkins Harper challenged this exclusion by advocating for a vision of universal suffrage that recognized the intersection of racial and gender justice, laying a crucial groundwork for the women’s suffrage movement.
“Insensibility of the Skin”: How Nineteenth Century Medical Knowledge Supported U.S. Enslavement. Written by Teddy Schaffer and edited by Bella Bryan.
Justifications for slavery in the United States existed in every field imaginable, ranging from economic benefit to biblical paternalism. Medical research was no exception, with doctors and scientists utilizing academics as an undeniable weapon. This essay discusses notable instances of racial science in the Antebellum South, such as drapetomania and cranial measurements, and how these fabricated studies were simultaneously self-confirming and hypocritical.
The Rising of the Reconstruction Era Ku Klux Klan. Written by Meile Songaila and edited by Violet Calkin.
Entrenched Patriarchal Norms and Contributors to Pan-Africanism: A Scholarly Conversation between Adom Getachew and Sylvia Tamale. Written by Oriana Torrealba and edited by Maggie Jessen.
“Entrenched Patriarchal Norms and Contributors to Pan-Africanism: A Scholarly Conversation between Adom Getachew and Sylvia Tamale” underscores the complex structures of race, gender, and colonial legacies in the academic narrative of Pan-Africanism. While Getachew highlights the efforts of prominent male anti-colonial figures, Tamale condemns the masculinist colonial biases that continue to marginalize women’s roles in Pan-African history. By putting Getachew and Tamale into dialogue, and through a critical analysis of Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti’s “The Status of Women in Nigeria,” this paper illustrates how decolonial con account of Pan-Africanist requires both amplifying overlooked female voices and interrogating how colonial ideologies persist within those contributions.
The Scope of Enslaved Labor in Washington D.C. Landmark Projects. Written by Cayla Weisner and edited by Wells Harned.
200-Level Research Projects
Unbinding the Dominant Notions of Foot Binding: Exploring Foot Binding in China Through Disability Identity and Compulsory Able-Bodiedness. Written by Rui Rui Bleifuss and edited by Liam Coughlin.
This paper examines foot binding in China during the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries through a Disability Studies lens. Foot binding has had a lasting impact by contributing to the beauty ideals many Chinese women and girls have experienced and thus, also impacting their roles in society, past and present.
Commodifying the Female Body: Degas, Toulouse-Lautrec, and the Visual Politics of Sex Work in Third Republic France. Written by Julia FitzGerald and edited by Claire Haile.
This essay investigates how the works of Degas and Toulouse-Lautrec, through their portrayals of prostitutes, reflect societal anxieties surrounding modernity, class dynamics, and female sexuality in late 19th-century France. By moving away from idealized portrayals and presenting prostitutes as real, commodified individuals, these artists exposed the contradictions of a consumer-driven society that both feared and relied on sex work. The essay argues that these depictions, framed within the historical context of the Third Republic, heightened social tensions and exposed the hypocrisy of gendered moral values.
Self-Immolation in Tibet and the Tibetan Diaspora: Why Extreme Methods of Protest Have Remained Ineffective at Instilling Political Change. Written by Walker Hansen and edited by Katherine Drozd.
In the 2010s, hundreds of Tibetan activists, monks, nuns, and laypeople set themselves on fire to protest the ongoing Chinese occupation of Tibetan land, the erasure of Tibetan cultural forms and religion, and the intensification of political violence exacted upon the Tibetan people. The protests resulted not only in the deaths and mutilations of numerous innocent people, but also in a corresponding expansion of repressive Chinese tactics, including the arrest, kidnapping, and torture of survivors and their family members. The self-immolations, while an extremely visible and shocking form of protest, have failed to further the cause for expanded Tibetan rights or garner the support of international bodies. The future of Tibetan resistance therefore requires a new kind of protest that sanctifies and protects the lives of Tibetans while attracting international attention to Chinese repression.
300-Level Research Projects
An Analysis of Chateaubriand’s Atala. Written by Maureen Cavanaugh and edited by Bella Bryan.
This paper examines Chateaubriand’s 1802 novella Atala in the context of the French Revolution, exploring how this work portrays a Native American society as a positive foil to the radicalism of the day. Atala advocates for a return to France’s traditional Catholic values, and in doing so, critiques those who carelessly depart from them. Chateaubriand draws on his own experience as an émigré fleeing the Revolution and combines it with Enlightenment ideals to paint a hopeful portrait of the Americas, encouraging the rebuilding of a divided France.
Exclusion to Fusion the Chinese Restaurant as a Site of Cultural Negotiation. Written by Phil Greenwood and edited by Sofia Cimballa.
Through an analysis of the Chinese restaurant boom in the 50 years following the 1849 California Gold Rush, this paper explores a culinary phenomenon that seems paradoxical given the era’s anti-Chinese sentiment. The paper argues that the rise of Chinese restaurants in the U.S. was not simply a result of American adventurousness or Chinese business strategy, but a mutual cultural negotiation. Chinese restaurateurs modified their spaces and menus to appeal to upper-class White patrons, while those patrons risked social status to experience the “exotic.” This negotiation transformed Chinese restaurants into shared spaces where both sides reshaped cultural boundaries, creating an entirely new subculture through food and atmosphere.
Silenced and Stereotyped: The Intersection of Gender, Race, and Exclusion in Chinese Immigrant Narratives. Written by Sahil Hogarty and edited by Liam Coughlin.
This paper explores how Chinese immigrant women in the 19th century were portrayed as threats to public health and morality, and how that portrayal fueled laws like the Page Act of 1875. I was fascinated by how these gendered stereotypes not only excluded women but also emasculated Chinese men, fracturing communities, and shaping American immigration policy. This wild topic offers a striking lens into how public health and morality were weaponized to shape exclusionary policies—an issue that remains relevant today.
Picking Up the Pieces: How Japanese Incarceration Affected the Japanese American Identity. Written by Hannah Holmes and edited by Katherine Drozd.
Most stories about Japanese incarceration end with Japanese Americans being released from the camps after World War II. However, the struggles that Japanese Americans faced did not end with their release; in many ways, they were only just beginning. Japanese Americans returning to life post-incarceration not only shifted racial dynamics across the country, but also irrevocably changed the Japanese American identity. The intergenerational trauma incurred from incarceration can still be felt today.
The Effects and Impacts of Japanese Incarceration During World War II. Written by Elle Jacobsen and edited by Julia FitzGerald.
Healthcare During Japanese American Incarceration: Maternal Care Within the Context of Historical Racism. Written by Tammy Kim and edited by Claire Haile.
Umami and Unrest: Unpacking MSG and Racial Stereotypes. Written by Ye Yul Lee and edited by Maggie Jessen.
Monosodium glutamate, more commonly known as MSG, is widely believed to negatively affect human health. Despite scientific results that prove against this belief and the widespread use of the additive in manufactured foods, there is a particular negative obsession over MSG when associated with Asian cuisine. By examining the history of Chinese Cuisine in America and the context of the “Chinese Restaurant Syndrome,” I argue that the MSG scare was based on a racialized discourse that used science to reaffirm preexisting racism and negative ideas about the exoticism and unassimilable traits of Chinese Americans.
Saint-Simonian Female Feminists: Who Needs Saints When You’ve Got Equality. Written by Abigail Przynosch and edited by Violet Calkin.
In nineteenth-century France, utopian socialist ideas like Saint-Simonianism challenged the political and economic order of the modern state, yet often omitted female perspectives. This essay analyzes the political writings of Jeanne Deroin, Flora Tristan, and Pauline Roland to reveal their distinctly feminist reinterpretations of Saint-Simonian philosophy and their contributions to the broader European women’s rights movement.
Coffee, Conversation, and Chaos: Alfred Delvau’s Reflections on Parisian Cafes During Napoleon’s Second Empire. Written Sophia Rees and edited by Wells Harned.
400-Level Research Projects
Urbanization and Civilization: Public Health Interventions and State-Building in Buenos Aires, 1880-1910. Written by Anne Berquist and edited by Crosby Boe.
In early 20th-century Argentina, the Buenos Aires government invested in health-informed urban beautification projects to encourage physical and social activities beneficial to the nation’s development. The interventions increased the influence of the government over the health decisions of individuals. Buenos Aires’ urban renewal reflected a wider anxiety among its political and medical elite that Argentina’s modernization was restricted by a physically and morally degenerated population.
480-Level Capstone Projects
The Prostitute’s City: The Experience of Prostitutes in the North End of Boston as Influenced by Anti-Vice Reform (1850s). Written by Anna Gwyn and edited by Taylor McGibbon.
What role do independent women play in the city? By examining a historical place through a spatial lens, scholars can better understand how urban inhabitants both shaped and were shaped by the city around them. This paper investigates the specific tensions between women involved in moral reform movements and female sex workers living in 1850s Boston. It emphasizes how an individual’s sense of place within the city influences their lived experience and self-understanding, particularly as shaped by the perceptions of others who share and define that space.
Against the Grain: Tobacco Resistance in Mecklenburg County During the 1870s-1890s. Written by Eamon Moylan and edited by Taylor McGibbon.
I wrote “Against the Grain: Tobacco Resistance in Mecklenburg County During the 1870s-1890s” for HIS 480. I initially wanted to examine Mecklenburg’s Gilded-Age Tobacco industry, but I uncovered some resistance to the crop. From then on, my research question shifted, and I endeavored to unpack why resistance existed in Mecklenburg County.