About ten percent of the History Class of 2006 spent an intensive senior year researching and writing an honors thesis. Their efforts culminated in the Twenty-Second Annual History Honors Symposium, which was held on Friday, April 28, 2006, in the William L. Clements Library. Each of the honors graduates presented his or her thesis research to an audience of their faculty advisors, families, and friends. After the presentations, each graduate received honors cords and a certificate from the LSA Honors Program. The Symposium was followed by lunch in the Haven Hall Ballroom.

The History Honors Program consists of three terms of rigorous research and writing. Even as students work with their individual faculty advisors, they also participate in a writing workshop with others in the program under the supervision of Professor Jesse Hoffnung-Garskof. Most of these students prepared to write their thesis in a junior year honors colloquium with Professors Joshua Cole and Farina Mir.

Many thanks to this year's Honors Committee, Professors Jesse Hoffnung-Garskof, Martin Pernick and Jonathan Sheehan, to the many dedicated thesis advisors and evaluators, and to the award donors, for making the History Honors Program a success once again.

The Honors Committee is pleased to announce the following awards for outstanding thesis writing and oral presentations. These awards are made possible through the generosity of several donors to the History Department.

more PHOTOS of Symposium

Symposium Program (pdf file)

                                                      Thesis Awards

Arthur Fondiler Award for Best Thesis:
Alexandra Sloan
"Why Else Have the French Come to Indochina?" Alexandre Yersin, the Institut Pasteur, and French Colonial Science and Medicine, 1890-1943
Advisor: Alexandra Stern

Sang Woo Kim
The Duke and His Artists: The Politics of Visual Representation in Public Spectacles of Florence During the Reign of Cosimo I de'Medici
Advisor: Megan Holmes

John A. Williams History Award:
Timothy Retzloff
"Just Unheard of": Suburbanization and the Shaping of Gay and Lesbian Communities in Metro Detroit
Advisor: Matt Lassiter

Stephen J. Tonsor History of Ideas Award:
Dayla Rogers
A House of Mirrors: Representations of Veiling in Modern Turkey
Advisor: Gottfried Hagen

James A. Knight History Award:
Tracy Gierada
A Manifest Tragedy: American Expansion and the Lumbering Frontier of Michigan
Advisor: Maria Montoya

Adam Rottenberg
Colorful Conflict: How World War II Invaded America's Cartoons and Comic Books
Advisor: Penny Von Eschen

Shreya Sengupta
Children of the Rwandan Genocide: Experiences and Assumed Identities of Youth During the Genocide of 1994
Advisor: Nancy Hunt

Stephen J. Tonsor Best Oral Presentation of Thesis Award:
Jared Cantor
Shades of Red: Perceptions of the Hukbalahap and the Factors of 'Communism' & 'Chinese'
Advisor: Victor Lieberman

Catalina Oyler
All Co-Eds Know How to Pet: The Social Constructs of Courtship in the 1920s at the University of Michigan
Advisor: Gina Morantz-Sanchez

LSA Honors Prizes

The Marshall Sahlins Social Science Prize: Alexandra Sloan, co-winner

The Robert Hayden Humanities Prize: Sang Woo Kim

Virginia Voss Writing Award: Amanda Bullock and Alexandra Sloan

Elizabeth Sargent Lee History of Medicine Award: Alexandra Sloan