Honors Program

The Honors Program in History at Michigan State University offers advanced instruction to students in the Honors College. The program guarantees students close interaction with faculty and focused training in research methods. Students who are in the Honors College yet pursuing other majors frequently take their university requirements in the History Department, some of whose courses can substitute for IAH or ISS classes.

Like all Honors College students, History majors in the Honors College are required to have eight honors experiences in the course of their work at Michigan State. Honors experiences may be accomplished through a variety of means: honors sections of regular courses, honors options in regular courses, the substitution of a graduate course for an undergraduate course, and so on. While History majors are encouraged to do many of these experiences in their History courses, honors experiences in other disciplines and in Integrative Studies will satisfy the requirement. Students in the College who major in History Education are not required to complete the senior thesis but rather achieve eight honors experiences as part of their normal coursework. For honors students majoring in History the senior thesis (two semesters of HST 499H) counts as two of these experiences.

The Senior Honors Thesis is the mark of distinction for students who complete the Honors Program in History. Students not in the Honors College may also apply to complete an Honors Thesis. This capstone experience is a yearlong, two-course sequence (499H) during which students prepare a substantial work of independent historical research under the guidance of a faculty member. Building the skills acquired during upper-division seminar classes, and working in conjunction with History Department faculty, the senior thesis process typically culminates in a work of approximately 60 to 75 pages. In recent years students have completed traditional theses as well digital humanities projects. In order to stimulate the most complete experience of historical research, Honors Program students are encouraged to apply for departmental funding for archival research, as well as for the History Department’s Scholars Program. The Honors director will provide you with the 499H application form.

• Cassia Bennett, "Subversive Nightlife in 1920s New York City"
• Andrew Palmer, "Between Bondage and Freedom: A Comparative Study of Enslaved and Free Labor in Antebellum and Confederate Charleston 1815-1865"
• Grace Lowell, "The Feminist Art Movement as a Branch of the Greater Women's Movement if the 1970s"
• Madeleine Loomis, "The Palmer Raids and Media"
• Maxine Levanduski, "A History of the American Road Trip"
• Kara Hwang, “Teaching History for the Nation: Political Agendas Behind History Education with a Case Study of Early Stages of Republic of Korea"
• Anna LePage, “Malleable Minds, Social Solutions: Medicine and Myth in the Era of American Psychosurgery (1936-1977)”
• Emma Riddle, “Advertisements, Bok, and The Ladies’ Home Journal: The reflection of women’s culture and ideals in the ad spreads of The Ladies’ Home Journal, 1890-1910″
• Vera Love, “Exploring the Medicalization of the Queer Community”
• Brendan Zaleski, “Bound by the Motor City: African American Housing, Education, and Employment Inequality in Early 20th Century Detroit”
• Kendall Brach, “The FBI and the Black Panther Party: How the FBI Used Unconstitutional and Illegal Means to Psychologically and Physically Harm Members of the Black Panther Party”
• Mia Chinni-Ianzito, “Not of This Planet: The Life of Jazz Musicians During the Cold War and Personal Identity as a Product of National Power”
• Dylan Howell, “For All Eternity: Governmental Policy and the Wedding Dress on the American Home Front, 1940 – 1945”
• Joe Konczal, “Renewal and Race in Grand Rapids”
• Max Martus, “Françarménie: France, Orientalism, and the Armenian Genocide”
• Avery Underwood, “Liberté, Égalité, Atrocité: The Absence of French Accountability for Crimes Against Humanity in the Algerian War”
• Kaya Wilske, “Unto Her Death: A Gender Analysis of Witchcraft Convictions in 1630-1650s New England”
• Emily Austin, “Creatures of the Night: Werewolf Trials in Early Modern Europe”
• Britton Gustafson, “Imperial Medicine and the Second World War: The Kenyan Plague Epidemic of 1941-4″
• Michelle Norello, “The Sioux Uprising of 1862: Native Resistance, Settler Expansion, and the Civil War in the West”
• Daniel Opp, “The Myth of Achaemenid Decline”
• Aaron Pap, “Faith in Spite of the Facts”
• Bailey Williams, “Eugenics in Michigan: How the People of Michigan Interacted with the Eugenics Movement”
• Steven Brooks, “Prescribing Gender: Doctors, Psychiatrists, and Pastoral Counselors in Early Marriage Counseling”
• Willem Conner, “Let Ukraine be Free! Geopolitics, Ideological Conflict and the Ukrainian National Movement, 1917-1921″
• Makenzie Jacobs, “Die Ungehorsame Frau: ‘The Disobedient Woman’ and Popular Crime Literature in Eighteenth-Century Bavaria”
• Berkley Sorrells, “One Hundred Feet Underwater: Modernity and Displacement in the Norris Reservoir Basin, 1933-1936”
• Noah W. Thomas, “The Coordinated Subject: Totalitarianism and History”
• Leah K. Welch, “Hidden Hate or Hate Hardly Hidden?: Following the Life of a Holocaust Denial Ad on College Campuses in the Early 1990s”
• Jakob Myers, “Oceans Apart: Transnational Trade, Political Contestation, and the Makings of Empire in Zanzibar, 1828-1860”
• Gerald Sinclair, “The Hand of God: Using Christianity to Secure Power in Seventh-Century Northumbria”
• Lachlan Woods, “Times Past, Present, and Future: The Temporal Dimensions of South African Colonialism”
• Brett Binkowski, “Oenophile’s Empire: Wine and the Struggle for Global Prominence in Nineteenth-Century America”
• Allie Pail, “The Biography of Myrna Short: A Gendered Analysis of Federal Mathematicians, 1961-1993”
• Eric Baylis, “Strange Eons: Nuclear Waste, the Human Interference Task Force, and the Ethics of Applied Imagination”
• Marwa ElShazly, “Chaos and Currency: Cigarettes on the Black Market in Europe, 1940-1950”
• Matthew Brazier, “Vietnamese Agents of Change: An Exploration into Vietnamese Migration to the United States through the Nexus of U.S. Higher Education and the Vietnam War in the 1950s and 1960s”
• Aislinn Teachout, “Making the Personal Political: Understanding the Evolution of Sexual Assault and Feminism in Light of #MeToo”
• Anna Esenther, “Fact or Fancy? The Conflicting Approaches of Classical Economists and Mid-Nineteenth-Century English Novelists to Understanding Industrial Capitalism”
• Natalie Holland, “Youth Action in Zambian History”
• Andrew Rockett, “Eyes on Crime: A Case Study in Local Crime Coverage, 1961-1990”