The fourteenth publication of Davidson History Journal includes work from the 2025-2026 academic year. 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.
200-Level Research Projects
A Disregard for the People and the Land: Nationalist Relief Policies in WWII. Written by Nathanael Fritz and edited by Sofia Cimballa.
Eroticism, Madness, and Medical Authority: Producing Feminine Hysteria in the Iconographie photographique de la Salpêtrière. Written by Luisa Lieberman and edited by Will Ekstrand.
This paper explores how hysteria in nineteenth-century France was not only diagnosed but actively constructed through medical authority. Focusing on the Iconographie photographique de la Salpêtrière, produced under Jean-Martin Charcot, it examines how female patients were staged as embodiments of sexual excess, irrationality, and religious fervor through both photographs and accompanying text. These representations linked femininity with madness while reinforcing medical authority over women’s bodies. In doing so, the Iconographie shaped broader cultural norms about gender and social order.
Inheriting Extraction: The South Manchuria Railway Company and the PRC’s Colonial Legacy in Manchuria. Written by Jack Srinivasan and edited by Ansley Scott.
Man Must Conquer Heaven: The Great Leap Forward and the Cost of Belief. Written by Jim Wang and edited by Gabe Garcia.
300-Level Research Projects
Erasing the Past: The Legacies of Slavery in Higher Education. Written by Ava Branch and edited by Taylor Winstead.
This paper examines how Southern institutions of higher education, including Davidson College, systematically embedded pro-slavery ideology into their curricula, while simultaneously obscuring the contributions of enslaved laborers through practices of selective memorialization and archival omission. Drawing on case studies from Davidson, UNC Chapel Hill, and the University of Virginia, I argue that deliberate acts of institutional amnesia have consistently shifted the burden of historical accountability away from administrations and onto individual faculty members and student coalitions. Ultimately, the paper contends that gestures such as monuments and renaming committees, while meaningful, remain insufficient so long as institutions resist a full and transparent reckoning with their complicity in slavery.
Rev. Brenda Howard Tapia, the AIDS Quilt, and Beyond. Written by Cole Erickson and edited by Brant Simmons.
The essay “Rev. Brenda Howard Tapia, the AIDS Quilt, and Beyond” explores the life and legacy of one of Davidson’s most beloved mentors. Rev. Tapia was both a teacher to all students as well as an activist for the LGBTQ+ community during the AIDS crisis, a time when fear and prejudice emanated throughout the country. Nevertheless, Rev. Tapia’s faith and personal connection to racism and prejudice guided her love and support for the queer community, rather than discouraged her acceptance of it. Her public intellectual work extended beyond the AIDS quilt and had a lasting impact on the cooperation of religious and queer life at Davidson.
How to Tell the Story of the Holocaust: Memoir Analysis Two. Written by Stella Mackler and edited by Sofia Vitali.
“Saving the Innocents:” Public Health, Prostitution, and Middle-Class Philanthropy in Victorian London. Written by Eliza McGee and edited by Julia Carey.
A Quilter of Community: Reverend Brenda Howard Tapia. Written by Sabrina Mowery and edited by Grace Worsham.
Reverend Tapia transformed Davidson College by fostering a safe, equitable environment for all, including the LGBTQ community. In a time of institutional exclusion and heightened stigma caused by the AIDS epidemic, Tapia collaborated with Reverend Rob Spach and Sherry Nelson to build enduring support systems. Tapia’s community-building efforts —most notably hosting the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt in 1994— helped bridge cultural divides and elevate marginalized voices to start creating a more compassionate and equitable campus.
Between Two Worlds: Israel Zangwill’s Children of the Ghetto and Anglo-Jewish Identity Formation in Late-Victorian London. Written by Sarah Tabor and edited by Galen Cooper.
Between Two Worlds: Israel Zangwill’s Children of the Ghetto and Jewish Identity Formation in Late-Victorian London” analyzes Zangwill’s 1892 work of ethnographic fiction, which describes the East End London slums of Whitechapel and Spitalfields, hubs for the growing immigrant Jewish community of the London Metropolis. A child of Jewish immigrants himself, Zangwill’s prose captures both vibrancy and hardship at a moment of sharp intercommunal tension within the broader Anglo-Jewish community struggling to define a modern sense of hyphenated identity.
400-Level Research Projects
Exercising Autonomy, Demanding Atonement: Sex Workers’ Resistance to Japan’s Prostitution Prevention Act. Written by Violet Calkin and edited by Ava Smith.
This paper examines how Japanese sex workers actively resisted the 1956 Prostitution Prevention Act. While the legislation intensified the dangers and stigmatization of their labor, sex workers contested their criminalization through writing, advocacy and organizing. Although they ultimately failed to overturn the law, their resistance disrupts dominant narratives of passive victimhood. Instead, it reveals how despite a long history of exploitation under patriarchal nationalism, sex workers asserted autonomy and challenged the political and social systems that sought to erase them.
Sentiments Towards Birth Control in Interwar Japan: A Neo-Malthusian Mechanism or a Societal Disgrace. Written by Maia Chisari and edited by Lillie Culver.
This paper examines the range of Japanese responses to Margaret Sanger’s 1922 visit, arguing that birth control in interwar Japan became a contested political and social issue rather than a uniformly accepted reform. Drawing on primary sources and scholarship, it shows how actors across the ideological spectrum, feminists, socialists, physicians, and government officials, reinterpreted birth control through competing frameworks such as neo-Malthusianism, eugenics, nationalism, and class struggle. Ultimately, the paper argues that Sanger’s tour served as a catalyst for debate, revealing how transnational feminist ideas were reshaped within Japan’s unique socio-political context rather than simply adopted or rejected.
The Chorus of the Forgotten: Silk Worker Songs from Meiji and Taishō Japan. Written by Julia FitzGerald and edited by Taylor Winstead.
This paper explores the lives and experiences of female silk workers in Meiji and Taishō Japan through an analysis of the songs they sang. It argues that these songs function as powerful forms of oral history, capturing the resilience, resistance, and everyday realities of working-class women. More than personal expressions, these songs serve as cultural metaphors that both reflect and critique Japan’s industrialization, economic transformation, and the gendered moral narratives of the modern state.
480-Level Senior Research Seminar Papers
Redefining Rosie: The Portrayal of American Women in World War II Mobilization Campaigns, 1941-1945. Written by Katherine Drozd and edited by Violet Calkin.
This paper reconsiders popular assumptions that World War II recruitment propaganda aimed at women promoted female empowerment, arguing instead that these posters framed women in a way that encouraged them to enter the workforce while also perpetuating traditional domestic and feminine gender roles. Examining this contradiction, this paper will help us better understand the process by which women entered and exited the workplace before and after World War II, illuminating how views of women’s domestic labor and the presence of visual regimes were reflected in wartime mobilization efforts aimed at women.
Sisterhood of Supremacy: The Ideology, Activities, and World of the Women’s Ku Klux Klan, 1923-1930. Written by Julia FitzGerald and edited by Abby Murphy.
This paper explores the Women’s Ku Klux Klan as a fully constructed “Invisible Empire,” in which white Protestant women built identity, community, and purpose through rituals, hierarchy, and klan activity. It examines how this world enabled women to claim leadership and agency while defining themselves in opposition to marginalized groups and embedding white supremacist ideology into everyday life. Ultimately, the WKKK provided a space where women could exercise power and construct meaning within a reactionary vision of nationhood and womanhood.
From Tropical Jungle to Garden City: Examining State Memory and Citizen Nostalgia in Singapore 1965-Present Day. Written by Dylan Low and edited by Taylor McGibbon.
Following independence in 1965, Singapore’s urban development has significantly decreased the country’s agricultural spaces, impacting the land and livelihoods of Singaporean citizens. As a result, two contrasting Singaporean identities emerged: one, a state-curated identity focused on the future; the other, an outburst of citizen nostalgia for Singapore’s historic connection to its land and cultural heritage. In this paper, I argue that the physical transformation of Singapore from a tropical jungle into a highly developed island nation has resulted in intense nostalgia among its citizens. The combination of conducted interviews with Singaporean farmers, along with extensive analysis of scholarly literature, aids readers in further understanding the prioritization of modernity in Singapore’s neoliberal society and the complexities it presents.
“They Died Silently”: Sanctifying Hunger in Lebanon, 1915–1918. Written by Taylor McGibbon and edited by Katherine Drozd.
How does a society remember a disaster it cannot openly explain? This paper examines the Mount Lebanon famine of 1915–1918 as both a humanitarian catastrophe and a crisis of language. It argues that missionaries, relief organizations, and Lebanese writers translated politically produced starvation into a moral and spiritual narrative, framing hunger as a divine trial rather than imperial violence. This “moral translation” allowed contemporaries to navigate censorship and fear, but it also reshaped the famine’s afterlife, embedding it in biblical metaphor and humanitarian sentiment. By tracing the evolution of this language, the paper demonstrates how moral frameworks depoliticized suffering and contributed to the famine’s marginalization in Lebanese national memory.
The Presence of the Under-Examined “New Woman” in San Francisco’s 1885-1914 Illicit Public Gambling Sphere. Written by Ariana Molina and edited by Wells Harned.
This paper examines the late 19th-century New Woman through her role as a gambler. The New Woman has been discussed in challenging social norms, but scholarship has failed to recognize her place in society as a successful gambler. This paper focuses on the San Francisco woman of the late 19th and early 20th century to emphasize how the New Woman challenged social norms by participating in the illicit public sphere and created a moral scare amongst society for doing so.
America’s Foundational Farewell: George Washington’s Farewell Address in Early American Newspapers, 1796-1826. Written by Abby Murphy and edited by Phil Greenwood.
The following paper examines how early American newspapers transformed George Washington’s Farewell Address from a personal political statement into a foundational element of national identity between 1796 and 1826. By analyzing its widespread reprinting, political use, and moral framing, the paper argues that the Address became a shared source of authority, guidance, and legitimacy in public life. Ultimately, it demonstrates how print culture played a central role in elevating the Farewell Address into a kind of civic scripture that helped define early American political and cultural values.
“We don’t want to bring to Milwaukee the southland’s Jim Crowism:” Racialized Urban Development in Milwaukee, 1910–1968. Written by Chip Roth and edited by Liam Coughlin.
This paper traces the history of race and urban development in Milwaukee, Wisconsin from 1910–1968. It argues that the early 1940s were a pivotal moment in constructing racial divisions throughout the city which persist into the 21st century. Covering the 1910–1968 date range, this paper contextualizes its thesis within key developments of race in the United States urban North. These factors include the Great Migration, racial zoning, economic zoning, racially restrictive covenants, redlining, blockbusting, labor strikes, protests, riots, uprisings, Supreme Court cases, and civil rights legislation.