Undergraduate Student Features

2022 History Essay Prize Winners

Each year, the Department of History offers several monetary prizes for the best undergraduate essay in a number of categories. Please join us in congratulating our essay prize winners.

European History Prize

"A Case that Herodotos Really Went to Egypt"

Spencer McDaniel

The Greek historian Herodotos of Halikarnassos dedicates most of Book Two of his Histories to a description of the history, geography, and ethnography of Egypt known as the Αἰγύπτιος λόγος, in which he claims to have visited Egypt himself and acquired much of his information through personal autopsy. Scholars such as O. Kimball Armayor, Detlev Fehling, and Stephanie West have cast doubt on the notion that Herodotos ever really visited Egypt, pointing out what they perceive as inaccuracies in his account that are incompatible with personal autopsy. This paper argues that some of these perceived inaccuracies are not inaccuracies at all, that the inaccuracies that do exist in Herodotos’s account are compatible with him having really gone to Egypt, and that Herodotos displays knowledge of Egypt that he is unlikely to have gained in any way other than by having visited the country himself.

John W. Foster Prize

"Communio: How American Diplomacy Failed to Shape Polish Catholic Culture in the Cold War"

Sarah Hensler

At the Yalta Conference in 1943, the Allied Powers agreed to give the Soviet Union jurisdiction over Poland at the end of World War II. With this power, Joseph Stalin cut Poland off from communications with the west and converted the nation from its previous democracy to a communist satellite state. Hundreds of independent Polish organizations disappeared within a few years, but one refused to die: the Catholic Church. The improbable survival of the Catholic faith in Poland was juxtaposed with the collapse of diplomatic relations between the United States, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union. This paper analyzes how two perspectives on postwar Poland can be so distant, even though they had the capacity to work closely together. This paper examines American foreign relations documents and memoirs from Catholics living in Poland to understand how faith and diplomacy failed to connect at the end of the second World War.

M. Jeanne Peterson Prize

"The Perception of the Galloi in Hellenistic Greek Sources"

Spencer McDaniel

The Galloi were a group of mendicant devotees of the Phrygian mother goddess Kybele who are first attested in Hellenistic Greek sources from the third and second centuries BCE. Although they were assigned male at birth, they intentionally castrated themselves, dressed in women’s clothing, wore their hair long in styles the Greeks and Romans perceived as effeminate, wore makeup, and generally adopted a feminine manner of self-presentation. Greek and Roman authors generally regarded them with disgust and disdain, viewing them as foreign and effeminate. Scholars in the past century have dedicated much attention to the portrayal of the Galloi in Roman-Era sources. This paper analyzes the portrayal of the Galloi in the earliest Hellenistic Greek sources in which they appear, noting specific differences in their portrayal from the later Roman sources that have been more intensely studied and arguing that, although the overall portrayal is still hostile, Hellenistic sources tend to view the Galloi’s feminine behavior and presentation as comical or exotic rather than viscerally disgusting and display lesser focus on their acts of body modification and self-harm.

World History Prize

"Missionaries: Imperial Germany's Social Engineers in Africa"

Dawson Davis

During the late 19th century, European missionaries shadowed the military occupation of Africa. Guaranteed new rights of passage with the backing of imperial expeditionary armies, many mission societies settled across the African continent to begin the conversion of indigenous peoples. Germany’s missionaries were no exception to the rule in this trend, often providing provision and education in exchange for Africans’ loyalty to mission societies. German missionaries considered themselves highly motivated and apolitical to the criminality of secular colonialism. Despite their claims of adhering to non-secular conduct, German missionaries were among the most manipulative and brutal in responding to their African audiences. Many consequences came from the missionization of Africa, contradicting missionaries’ motives as self-proclaimed non-secular servants of God’s message. The doctrine of German missionaries juxtaposed to the conduct within Africa reveals a clear dichotomy between the aspirations of mission work with the realities that colonization and its inherently violent nature do to such missions.

World History Prize (Honorable Mention)

"Gendering Genocide: Propaganda and Sexual Violence in the 1965-66 Indonesian Anti-Communist Purge"

Kia Heryadi

Indonesia’s communist party, Partai Komunis Indonesia (PKI), was the largest non-ruling communist party in the world until the army blamed an attempted coup on October 1, 1965 on the PKI. Thus began an army-led campaign of mass violence targeting not only alleged PKI members, but members of affiliated groups as well, such as members of a women’s organization called Gerwani. While the number of deaths remains unknown, estimates range from a conservative 500,000 to 3 million. This paper explores how female victims’ experience in the Indonesian genocide, such as members of Gerwani, differed from male victims’ experience in the genocide. Through an analysis of first person testimony and Indonesian newspaper articles from 1965 and 1966, l argue that female victims’ experience of the genocide differed from male victims because women were more likely to experience sexual violence due to propaganda against Gerwani spread through mass media.

William M. Locke Essay Prize

"Battles over Bandanas: The Relationship between Black Women and the Image of the Perfect Servant"

Savannah Price

For over 130 years, Aunt Jemima smiled proudly on boxes of pancake mix stocked on shelves nationwide. She was happy to serve whoever bought her and took her home. Although her image seems harmless at first glance, the racial nostalgia it implies is not. It hearkens back to a time when Black women were expected to cook for their white owners with a smile on their face and no complaints. In this essay, I explore how the role of Black women in America as “perfect servant” was created by white people to confine Black women to a subservient role and glorify the Old South, then maintained by popular media and brands like Aunt Jemima, which have evolved over the years to become less offensive, but have never truly set her free from her subservient role.