Undergraduate Research

The Middle Ages, like no subsequent era of western history, suffers from a dearth of sources, and never is this more striking than when trying to reconstruct the history of the common people. Medieval peasants, and most townspeople, were illiterate, leaving no traces of their beliefs or thoughts from their own hands. Their lives must be gleaned from the writings of the literate class, the clergy, who documented their world in chronicles and letters that supply much of what we know about the period. People often think of medieval clergy as popes and bishops living in lavish palaces, far removed from the lives of everyday people, but, in fact, many dealt directly with common people on a daily basis and could closely observe their practices. The economic revolution that gave rise to towns in the High Middle Ages also influenced the creation of new orders of mendicant friars, who traveled from town to town preaching to anyone who would listen. In this way, the friars involved themselves in a dialogue with ordinary people that informed their own sermons that had to appeal to that audience. I intend to use these sermons and other clerical writings to investigate popular beliefs and practices in 13th century Europe. I have three primary sources from which most of my material will come, all of which were written in the first half of the 13th century. Etienne de Bourbon was a Dominican friar who worked as an inquisitor for many years in the south of France, and he compiled his first-hand knowledge in a collection known as Tractatus de diversis Materiis Praedicabilibus, which contains hundreds of stories to use as exempla in sermons. Jacques de Vitry began as a regular canon in Liège and later became involved in the Fifth Crusade and was named Bishop of Acre, and later became a Cardinal. He too wrote many sermons and compiled a collection of exempla. Caesarius of Heisterbach, unlike the previous two, was a cloistered Cistercian monk in the Rhineland of Germany, who wrote a collection of miracle stories called the Dialogus Miraculorum that supplied sermon stories for many sermon writers of his time and later. Only the last is available in English translation; the first two will require extensive translation from the original Latin. Read the rest of this entry »

For the next nine months, this blog will document the honors thesis I’m writing through the history department at William and Mary. It’s a challenging project to say the least, and I’m frankly a tad intimidated. However, I’m also intrigued and fascinated by my topic, and I’m truly excited to be investigating it.

I’ll be examining Italian evangelicals during the course of the Roman Inquisition. The Protestant movement in Italy is different and quite unique from reformations in other European countries. I’m particularly interested in looking at the pysical and psychological journeys of “heretics.” As pressure and persecution from the Roman Church increased, many evangelicals felt the need to flee their homeland. Large numbers of Protestants flocked to Ferrara, the Valtellina, and the Piedmont, but most especially to Venice. While using these domestic movements as a backdrop, I would like to focus on the flight of Italian evangelicals abroad, specifically to John Calvin’s Geneva. A small, but fervent Italian church developed in this city, and I am interested in examining the life of these Italian exiles.

While compelled to follow their consciences, these steadfast believers were not always supported by those around them. Exiles frequently sacrificed their homeland, their property and their family to pursue religious truth.  Exiles’ decisions and motivations are of particular interest to me, and I’d like to examine the impact of exile on families. Did religion truly tear families apart? Were these families able to sustain relationships despite geographical distance? If so, how did they communicate? Did the separated spouses form new families, this time based on similar religious beliefs?

In conjunction with these inquiries, I want to look into the vital components of communication for these exiles. Since the Inquisition frequently forced them to conceal their beliefs and go underground, how did evangelicals communicate with one another, both domestically and abroad? How were ideas transmitted during this time, and what networks helped Protestantism survive? How did families communicate with one another when separated?

These are the questions I’m particularly interested in, but I’m positive my direction will shift and become more focused as my research continues. Stay tuned!

Welcome to Blogs @ William and Mary. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!

Time to figure out what this is all about . . .

Immigration has been, and always will be, a topic near and dear to my heart. My great grandmother, Anna Yustik, immigrated to New York from Czechoslovakia right after World War I. Although she left her home and family, she brought her culture with her, and established herself within a Slovak community in upstate New York. The community in which she lived helped to keep the traditions of her homeland alive in a new country. Without that support system, without the continuation of Slavic culture, rituals, and religious tradition in her everyday life, it would have been extremely difficult for Anna to pass her culture on to her children.

Whatever does Post WWI Slovak immigration have to do with inspiration for a Scottish themed research project? The survivability of culture across the Atlantic, despite the physical and emotional turmoil of those transporting it, helped inspire my project. The ignorance of late nineteenth to mid twentieth century historians led the scholarly community to believe in some seriously flawed ideas about Trans Atlantic immigration. For example, the most well known fallacy of immigration history is the notion that African Americans have no culture, since it was lost in the middle passage. Though this idea has long since been invalidated, more such infuriatingly obscure ideas about trans-Atlantic culture still exist. People who were brought to North America by force or who immigrated here by choice never simply abandoned their culture or lifestyles once they arrived here or lost it in transit. As humans, we strive to maintain an identity with our family, our culture, or a larger group, which is why culture survives across oceans, as well as generations.

Painfully little research has been conducted on the culture and life of Scottish immigrants to North America in the eighteenth Century. What research I have thus far delved into presents the North American Scottish communities as communities which emigrated here from Scotland with individuals who no longer associated themselves with the culture which in effect makes a Scottish person a Scot. Historians such as Duane Meyer and Bernard Bailyn argue in defense of this theory. For them, the reason why the Scottish immigrants remained loyal to the crown in the American Revolution remains simply that they no longer affiliated themselves with the Scottish culture alone, but that they saw themselves as British. This theory rejects the proof presented through colonial documents that these people brought with them their own customs, traditions, and means of living unique to the Scottish tradition. Since these people did indeed mark themselves as Scottish, there remains an evident flaw with the foundation of Bailyn and Meyer’s arguments. Through my thesis, I hope to discover the true reasons behind Scottish loyalty to the British during the American Revolution.

The Battle of Culloden in 1745 and the subsequent defeat and exile of “Bonnie” Prince Charlie depressed all hopes for a glorious restoration of the House of Stuart to the Throne. The battle of the Jacobites against the House of Hanover left the ancient clans of the Highlands in tatters, and broke apart the notorious leadership of the Highland clans. Voyages from Scotland to the British colonies of North America have recorded the expulsion of Jacobite rebel prisoners following the Battle of Culloden. Scottish immigrants formed sizeable colonies both in South and North Carolina. The most intriguing part of the history of this influx of Scottish immigration was their defense of the English in the Revolutionary War. Why did these people, who the English cast out of their country, not defend the British Colonists instead of the English officials? Why would these proud Scotts defend the very men of the country which had so mercilessly destroyed their livelihoods in the Highlands, and who had even made it illegal to bare their clan’s tartans? It seems to be one of the greatest ironies of history that the Scotts defended their enemy only two decades after a battle which, even today, has left bitter resentment toward the English. How did these people affect the Revolution? How did their defense of the English affect the British Colonies? I hope to gain insight into why these men fought on the side of the English. Did the destruction of clan leadership lead the Scots to look to the English, or were the Scots pressured by English to fight for them for economic, religious, or personal reasons? The main goal at the start of my research will be to discover why the Scottish immigrants did not use the Revolutionary War as their opportunity for revenge against the English for their defeat at Culloden. What advantage could the Scots possibly have in defending the men who attempted to completely destroy and outlaw their culture?

I became what I call “fully acquainted” (or at least much more so than previously) with the Great Depression and Dust Bowl while in ninth grade.  I knew of the Depression and Dust Bowl beforehand; as an avid reader I fell in love with historical fiction novels that covered 1930s America.

My love for the era reached a new level in ninth grade.  Each student in my English class picked a topic about the 1920s (we were studying F. Scott Fitzgerald at the time), and the topic ideas included World War I and the Great Depression and Dust Bowl.  I chose the latter and completly immersed myself in reserach.  Texts, journals and diaries, photographs, and newspapers pretty much took over my family’s dining room (my favorite place to work at home).  I just couldn’t get enough information, or look at enough photographs, and I realized that I could easily spend a lot of time (meaning a much longerspan than a week or two) studying the Great Depression and Dust Bowl.

Over the past couple of years I have become increasingly interested in women’s history.  I loved exploring the changes that occurred in American women’s roles, as well as in conceptions of family and femininity, from the Antebellum period through the present but found that the female Dust Bowl experience was largely ignored.  The hardships caused by the Dust Bowl, ranging from starvation for forced migration, had to have a unique impact on women, and I decided to explore that impact.

I plan to examine women’s lives as affected by the Dust Bowl, looking at both those directly and indirectly affected by the droughts and dust storms.  I also hope to analyze the responses of different groups of women to the conditions brought forth by the Dust Bowl.  How did changes faced by Great Plains women regarding productive and reproductive labor, migration and its impact on motherhood, and alterations in sanitation and other aspects of the home affect women’s lives?  In what ways were women in the East affected by the droughts and dust storms?  And how did women in the West, particularly in California, respond to the challenges presented to them by the Dust Bowl?

This fits into a larger historical context because it addresses a largely missing aspect of women’s history.   It also connects women’s history to environmental history.  I love filling in gaps, and my thesis work will allow me to do just that.

I knew as an incoming freshman that I would write a history honors thesis; I enjoy researching and writing too much to not write a thesis.  And I am too passionate about 1930s America to not devote a significant amount of time and effort into learning more about it and sharing the knowledge I gain with others.

Welcome to Blogs @ William and Mary. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!

Welcome to Blogs @ William and Mary. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!

I’d really love to be one of those people who can dream up a snappy title for the first entry in a new ‘blog. Barring sudden inspiration, however, I’ll continue to lean heavily on T.S. Eliot for all things titular. It’s a cheesy, English major-y thing to do, but so be it. I suppose introductions–to both myself and my work–are in order. I’m a rising senior at the College, originally from a tiny pocket of rural Northern Virginia (yes, there is a rural Northern Virginia), educated at boarding school in Connecticut, and currently majoring in English and Classical Studies. Also, I’m just back from W&M’s study abroad program at Oxford, so I’m not a half-bad person to ask about that if you’re a (prospective or otherwise) student with questions. This summer I’m completing a Dintersmith Fellowship through the Charles Center, which basically means I’m being funded to spend ten weeks of my summer beginning work on my honors thesis. The fellowship is new this year, and as an extension of it and other summer grants, the Charles Center is setting up this pool of blogs by undergraduate researchers. The hope is, I believe, that they will serve as a link between undergraduate researchers and a hodgepodge of other researchers and prospective students. So. Welcome to the blog. Read the rest of this entry »

There’s lots happening of in the field research that could be presented in this blog. One of the thing s that want to test  is the aggregation feature that pulls posts from multiple journals all into on mother blog.  That will include this one, and will then be extended to the ones the students are working with.  The first thirty words of the post will be included with the rest being included in the read me later section.  That is the hope at least.   This will the be the way that it should work, but we’ll see.