Meet Our Students
Students choose History & Literature because it's an interdisciplinary concentration that provides the structure and flexibility to study what they love. Click through the student profiles below to see the courses that made up each of their individualized paths in History & Literature.
Andrew Aoyama '21
Field worksheet:
Journey and Exile in the Colonial and Post-Colonial Mediterranean
Sophomore Essay topic: Cold War rhetoric and the 1953 Iranian coup
Junior Essay topic: Constructions of Arab masculinity at Abu Graihb
Senior Thesis Title: Family Matters: Spinning the Story of Tunisia's Transnational Jihadists
Ciara Hervás '21
Field Worksheet:
European Studies: France and Germany
Sophomore essay topic: Gender and sexuality in 19th-century French psychiatric photography
Junior essay topic: Magnus Hirschfield, sexological photographs, and Claude Cahun's surrealist photography
Senior thesis title: Seeing Beyond the Binary: The Photographic Construction of Queer Identity in Interwar Paris and Berlin
Jamie Paterno Ostmann '21
Sophomore essay topic: Sea monsters, maps, and curiosity in the early modern period
Junior essay topic: Magic and the supernatural in Shakespeare's plays
Senior thesis title: Scenes of Smoke and Scarlet: Cochineal and Tobacco in the Early Modern English Theater
Sally Chen '19
Field Worksheet: Ethnic Studies: Asian American Studies
Sophomore Essay Topic: The Politics of Race and Gender in California Women's Suffrage
Junior Essay Topic: The Boston Chinatown Public Libtary
Senior Thesis Title: "Take Root": Community Formation at the San Francisco Chinatown Branch Public Library
Esteban Arellano '21
Junior essay topic: Homonormative Haunting in The Inheritance
Senior thesis title: Dancing in the Dark: The Burden of Liveness at G.G.'s Barnum Room
Minnie Jang '18
Field Worksheet:
Latin American Studies: Global Health
Sophomore essay topic: The U.S. public health campaign during the Panama Canal’s construction
Junior essay topic: The Bolivian film Yawar Malku and the Peace Corps in 1960s Bolivia
Senior thesis title: Tracing Trauma: Discourses and Narratives of Experience in Post-Conflict Peru
Abby Westover '17
Junior essay topic: The symbolic importance of female hair in Medieval French romance
Senior thesis title: Hair and Female Agency in the European Middle Ages
Diana Myers '21
Field worksheet:
Medieval World
Sophomore essay topic: St. Ethelberga and the celebration of virgin martyr feast days
Junior essay topic: Catholic liturgy and the Maternity of St. Anne
Senior thesis title: Mater Matris Domini: Holy Motherhood and the Cult of St. Anne
Ruben Reyes '19
Field Worksheet: Ethnic Studies: Race and Cultural Citizenship in the United States
Sophomore Essay Topic: The 1932 La Matanza Massacre and Salvadoran Indigeneity
Junior Essay Topic: Constructing Salvadoran-Americanness in Javier Zamora's Unaccompanied
Senior Thesis Title: "Please / No American Mierdas": Shattering Silences, Salvadoran (In)Visibilities, and Imagined Nation in Javier Zamora’s Unaccompanied
Genevieve Hu '20
Sophomore essay topic: Rose Greenfield and British missionaries in India
Junior essay topic: Food and the Chinese American diaspora
Senior thesis title: Made in the USA: The Cultural Production of China's First Lady, Soog Mei Ling, in 1943
Gussie Roc '17
Sophomore essay topic: The nomadic "refugee" in contemporary hip hop
Junior essay topic: NeoSoul and nostalgia in India Arie and Lauryn Hill
Senior thesis title: "With Every Tear Comes Redemption": Heartbreak as a Form of Protest in Blues, Beyoncé, and #BlackLives Matter
Eileen Macron '17
Field worksheet:
Sophomore essay topic: British family law and Walter Payne’s The Cruelty Man
Junior essay topic: Parent-child relationships and Great Britain’s WWII evacuation scheme
Senior thesis title: Anna Freud and the Hampstead War Nurseries, 1941-1946: A Study on Displacement, Loss, and Reconciliation
Caleb Shelburne '18
Field Worksheet:
Modern World: French-Ottoman Encounters
Sophomore Essay Topic: 17th-century French literary depictions of Ottoman nobility
Junior Essay Topic: Enslavement and French Romanticism in a 19th-century travelogue
Senior Thesis Title: "Murmurs on the Orient Express: Ottoman Tracks in European Railway History"
Talia Rothstein '17
Sophomore essay topic: Juan Rulfo’s Es que somos muy pobres and post-Revolutionary Mexico
Junior essay topic: Nationalism and representations of the Mexican working class at the Cananea mine
Senior thesis title: La Mulata and the Nation: Narratives of Fear and Desire in Post-Revolutionary Mexico