The History Department
at Moravian College

Student Research

Senior Seminar:

This is our capstone course. To use the best of one’s knowledge and skills learned in the all history classes, a student writes a substantive research paper suitable for delivery at an undergraduate conference. Topics, which must be approved by the instructor, may be from any area of study covered in the department courses. One member of the department will direct the seminar and hold its weekly meetings, but all history faculty will serve as advisors as the students prepare their projects.

Recent Research Paper Topics:

  • Moravian Missionary Work in South Africa 1792-1816
  • French and Confederate Relations During the French Intervention in Mexico (1861-1866)
  • The Student Movement in Mexico during the 1970 Olympic Games
  • The Macedonian Wars of the Roman Republic 215 BC–148 BC
  • Julius Caesar as Military Leader 62 BC–45 BC
  • The Roman Military Reform in the 1st Century BC
  • Population Density in Late Medieval England
  • Margaret Beaufort: The Power of the King's Mother in Tudor England, 1485-1509
  • The Obligatory Work Service's Effect on Recruitment in French Resistance Organizations, 1940-1944
  • The Modes of Resistance in Extermination Camps 1941-45
  • The Revolutionary War and Lafayette in 1776
  • The Revolutionary War in New Jersey in 1776
  • The Steel Strike of 1959 in Pennsylvania
  • Sanitation Workers’ Strike in New York City in 1975

Honors Projects:

History students have actively participated in the Honors Program at Moravian College. The Honors at Moravian offers students of proven ability in their senior year the opportunity to pursue a year-long research project under the personal guidance of a faculty member whose own research is in that same area. Honors study in history is invaluable preparation for graduate and professional studies. The length of the honors thesis in history is 80-120 pages. It includes substantive work on primary sources and specific understanding of the pertinent scholarly discourse.

Recent Honors Projects:

2008

  • Diamonds are a Girl's Best Friend: Women's Baseball in the Twentieth Century
  • Patrons and Playwrights: Patronage in Tudor-Stuart England
  • The Edge of Belief: Exploring Apparitions in the Witchcraft Debate of Early Modern Britain
  • Beyond Motherhood: The Women's Movement and the Shift in Women's Legal Status in the United States, 1945-1986

2006

  • Taming Seventeenth Century Virginia: Wealthy Planters and the Colony They Created
  • The History of Blast Furnace Technology at Bethlehem Steel
  • Women's Work: The Production and Decoration of Textiles and Pottery in the Aegean Bronze Age

2005

  • Consonance, Dissonance and Resolution: The Federal Music Project as a Government Arts Organization
  • Freedom, Slavery, and the National Identity: The Evolution of American Political Thought from 1824 until 1860 through the Words and Careers of Abraham Lincoln, William Henry Seward, Stephen A. Douglas
  • Women Industrial Workers and Community Development Organizations in the El Paso - Ciudad Juárez Region: A Comparison of the Centro de Orientación de la Mujer Obrera and La Mujer

2004

  • A Study of Moravian Communal Structures from 1722-57 and the Zeremonienbüchlein

SOAR:

Student Opportunities for Academic Research (SOAR) is a Moravian College program that provides stipends to support projects in which students are engaged in scholarly or creative activity with faculty members. There are two separate programs. In the semester program, a student is working on the designated project eight hours a week and will be paid accordingly. In the summer program a student is engaged full-time in a research project for ten weeks.

All members of the History Department are active scholars who  are interested in sharing with the students their life of the mind. This is a great opportunity to work with some of the leading scholars in their fields.

How to start a SOAR project? Explore carefully what the professor or professors have published or are currently working on (our web page is the best starting point for that). Find a topic that intersects with the professor’s interests. In general, you should have taken at least one upper level course with the professor. Schedule an appointment. For the summer projects, you should approach the professor no later than February and for semester projects by March or October of the preceding semester. The professor then submits a proposal for the project.

Some of the undergraduate research projects in history have been:

  • Honor and Economics: The Ideologies of the Nazi-SS and Their Uses in Germany, 1926-1941
  • Canajoharie: An Eighteenth-Century Mohawk Village
  • Mistaking Africa: American Popular Culture Myths
  • The Method of Healing: The Concept of Vital Force in Samuel Hahnemann's Organon (1810)
  • Race and Family Formation on the Eve of Cuban Slave Emancipation
  • Emotional Culture in Eighteenth Century Moravian Communities