April 2015 Meeting

Our spring conference will be held April 18, 2015 at Worcester State University.

Mail-In Registration Form
Preliminary Conference Program (PDF)
Conference Details & Accommodations

CONFERENCE PROGRAM –

last updated 2/25/2015
All sessions will be held on the third floor of the Sullivan Academic Building (SAB)
(Note: all session rooms are equipped for internet and projection)

8:00-8:30 REGISTRATION & CONTINENTAL BREAKFAST: SAB 310 and 312

First Morning Sessions, 8:30-10:00

8:30 Session 1: Perspectives on European History (SAB 326)
Chair and Comment: Erika Briesacher, Worcester State University

“Eighteenth Century France: Women, the Enlightenment, and Public Space”*
Michelle Henault, Worcester State University
“German Empire-Building and Genocide”*
Breanna Barney, Worcester State University
“The Hitler Youth: Militarization or Indoctrination”*
Matthew Epstein, Worcester State University
“Saving Venice: A History of Save Venice, Inc, 1966-2016”
Megan Shea, U-Mass Lowell

8:30 Session 2: Perspectives on American History and Identity (SAB 320)
Chair and Comment: Robert W. Smith, Worcester State University

“The Impact of Colonial Beginnings on US Identity and Values”*
Katie Cameron, Worcester State University
“A New Jerusalem in the New World: The New Haven Colony Examined”*
Matthew Sheehan, Albertus Magnus College
“Ballot Access as Part of the American Political System, 1880-2012”*
Joshua Evans, Worcester State University
“The Ethnic Catholic Mark on Worcester, Massachusetts”*
Zach Washburn, Worcester State University

8:30 Session 3: Famous Travelers (and Others Who Made Travel Possible) (SAB 318)
Chair and Comment: Erik Jensen, Salem State University

“Striking Bold for Immortality: Jeremiah Reynolds, John Quincy Adams, and the Explorationist Vision”
Michael Verney, University of New Hampshire
“Ralph Waldo Emerson’s European Encounters: Meeting Charles Dickens, Alfred Tennyson, and
Thomas Carlyle; and Experiencing Europe”
Lars Ekström, University of Turku (Finland)
“Photography, Chinese Workers, and the Construction of the Transcontinental Railroad, 1865-1869”
Denise Khor, U-Mass, Boston

8:30 Session 4: Notable Statesmen from Massachusetts (SAB 314)
Chair and Comment: Clifford Putney, Bentley University

“Elihu Burritt and the Mechanics in Worcester, 1838-1848”
Jun Kinoshita, Kokugakuin University (Japan)
“John F. Kennedy and the Politics of Faith: Beyond 1960”
Patrick Lacroix, University of New Hampshire
“The Congressional Career of Edward P. Boland of Massachusetts”
Philip A. Grant, Jr., Pace University

8:30 Session 5: Helping the Young: Child Welfare, Traffic Safety and Home Economics (SAB 308)
Chair and Comment: Tona Hangen, Worcester State University

“Progressive Era ‘Child-Saving’: Institutions, Progressive Rhetoric, and ‘Broken’ Children”
Sarah Batterson, University of New Hampshire
“When Enforcement Means Something More: Teaching Citizens Traffic Safety in the 1950s”
Renée Blackburn, MIT
“’Not Foreigners, but Friends’: The Global Politics of Home Economics in the Twentieth Century”
Allison Horrocks, University of Connecticut

8:30 Session 6: War – Its Participants and Victims (SAB 307)
Chair and Comment: Martin Menke, Rivier College

“The Alexandrine War”
Robert Holmes, Villanova University
“Trailblazing and Pioneering Mapmakers: A Case Study of Women Cartographers and Geographers during World War II”
Mary DeLong, Northeastern University
“A Massacre in Jedwabne: A Psycho-Historical Analysis of the Events of July 10, 1941”*
Ryan Blejewski, Eastern Connecticut State University

Break for Book Exhibit & Refreshments: 10:00 – 10:30 (SAB 310-312)

Second Morning Sessions, 10:30 – 12:00

10:30 Session 7: French Involvement in World Affairs (SAB 326)
Chair and Comment: Melanie Murphy, Emmanuel College

“Agincourt Aside: Towards an Expanded View of International Relations in the Early Fifteenth Century”
Lorraine Attreed, College of the Holy Cross
“Imperial Petite Politique on Lake Ontario: Francois Picquet and John Lindesay, 1748-1754”
Greg Rogers, University of Maine
“The Taylorization of the French Revolution: The French Army, History, and the Experience of Industrial Warfare, 1918-1939”
Sharmishtha Roy Chowdhury, Emerson College

10:30 Session 8: Native Americans in Colonial New England (SAB 320)
Chair and Comment: Dane Morrison, Salem State University

“Enslaving the Heathen, Enslaving the Christian: The Connections between American Indian and
African Slavery in Seventeenth-Century New England”
Nathan Braccio, University of Connecticut
“Albany’s Commissioners for Indian Affairs, the Iroquois, and New England Indian Politics in a
Larger Borderlands Context, 1691-1755”
Andrew T. Stahlhut, Lehigh University
“’We Do Judge the Cause of Her Death’: Algonquian Women’s Bodies and New England Courts, 1700-1754”
Julia James, Syracuse University

10:30 Session 9: War and Culture in America: Identity and Anxiety during the Revolutionary, Mexican and Vietnam Wars (SAB 318)
Chair and Comment: Conrad Edick Wright, Massachusetts Historical Society

“Thomas Johnson: Patriot, Gentleman, American”
Angela Grove, University of Vermont
“Mormons, Manifest Destiny, and the Mexican-American War”
Natalie Coffman, University of Vermont
“The American Heroin Panic and the War in Vietnam: Cold War Hysteria and the Crisis of Nationhood”
Ashlee Payne, University of Vermont

10:30 Session 10: Women Who Acted ‘Outside the Box’: A Doctor, an Alleged Murderer, and Gravediggers (SAB 314)
Chair and Comment: Patricia Farless, University of Central Florida

“Harriot Kezia Hunt: Battling Harvard Medical School and Campaigning for Women’s Rights in
Antebellum America”
Myra C. Glenn, Elmira College
“Lizzie Borden: Innocent or Guilty”
Michael Carter, Wentworth Institute of Technology
“Eighteenth-Century Gender Identity and the London Women Who Buried the Dead”
Wanda S. Henry, Brown University

10:30 Session 11: Memento Mori: Remembrance of Death and its Ramifications in Nineteenth Century America (SAB 309)
Chair: Bruce Cohen, Worcester State University
Comment: Thomas E. Conroy, Worcester State University

“Childhood in Miniature: Posthumous Portraits as Memories in 19th Century America”*
Kaitlyn Benoit, Worcester State University
“Spiritualism, Stoners, and the Rose Covered Cottage: The Writings of Harriet Newell Greene”
Linda Hixon, Worcester State University
“’The Scum of Connecticut’: How Murder and Scandal Led to the Fall of the Seventh Connecticut
Volunteer Infantry”
Michael Baker, Worcester State University

10:30 Session 12: Sports and Recreation (SAB 308)
Chair and Comment: Elizabeth De Wolfe, University of New England

“Safe at Home?: The Ironic but Inspiring Victories of the Chinese Educational Mission Baseball Team”
Benjamin Railton, Fitchburg State University
“’A Matter of State’: Revere Beach, Commercial Amusements, and the Evolution of Massachusetts’ Sunday Laws”
Mark Herlihy, Endicott College
“’To Show the Way for the Diplomats’: The International Olympic Committee and the Cold War”
Erin Redihan, Clark University

10:30 Session 13: Creative Amusements: Horatio Greenough (Sculptor), Nat “King” Cole (Musician), and August Wilson (Playwright) (SAB 307)
Chair and Comment: Candace Kanes, Maine Historical Society

“America’s Cincinnatus, America’s Zeus: Horatio Greenough’s Washington”
Joseph Delaney, Johnson and Wales University
“Always a Jazzman at Heart: Nat ‘King’ Cole’s Turn and Return”
Philip Mosley, Penn State University
“’The Emancipated Century’: Remapping History, Reclaiming Memory in August Wilson’s
Dramatic Landscapes of the 20th Century”
Joyce Hope Scott, Wheelock College

12:15 – 1:25 LUNCHEON (Blue Lounge, Student Center 1st Floor)
Elections for NEHA Posts will be conducted after lunch

Afternoon Sessions, 1:45 – 3:15

1:45 Session 14: Social and Cultural Interactions in World History (SAB 326)
Chair and Comment: Martin Fromm, Worcester State University

“Looking at Diplomacy between the United States and Sub-Saharan Africa”*
Benjamin Gerhardt, Worcester State University
“Moving toward a Solution: Operation Iraqi Freedom, the Strategies, and Opinions on Rebuilding the Iraqi Nation”*
Jonathan Rizzo, Worcester State University
“Detroit and American Empire in the Postwar Period”*
Dan Makela, Worcester State University
“How . . . Romantic? Courtship in Heian Japan”*
Marc Speroni, Worcester State University

1:45 Session 15: Latin American History (SAB 320)
Chair and Comment: Sean Perrone, Saint Anselm College

“In Search of Froylán Turcios: The Life and Times of Armando Méndez Fuentes, 1925-2003”
Darío A. Euraque, Trinity College
“Life in the Caribbean during the 1942 German U-Boat Blockade”
Ligia T. Domenech, Northern Essex Community College
“The Dispute between the US and Mexico over Rising Salinity in the Colorado River, 1969-1972”
Shaine Scarminach, University of Connecticut

1:45 Session 16: The American Revolution and its Aftermath (SAB 318)
Chair and Comment: Robert Imholt, Albertus Magnus College

“’A number of the most respectable gentlemen’: Prisoners of War and Social Status in
Revolutionary South Carolina, 1779-1782”
Richard T. Tomczak, Stony Brook University
“The Pension Widow: Defining the Criteria for Women in the Revolutionary War Pension Process”*
Melissa Zablonski, Eastern Connecticut State University
“Foreign Affairs and the Ratification of the Constitution in Rhode Island”
Robert W. Smith, Worcester State University
“The Yorktown ‘Victory’ Monument: The Politics of Reunion and Empire”
Sarah M. Goldberger, Community College of Rhode Island

1:45 Session 17: Blacks in America, from the Colonial Period to Reconstruction (SAB 314)
Chair and Comment: John Zaborney, University of Maine at Presque Isle

“Colonial Sermons Written as Commentary on the Execution of Criminals of African Descent”
Tanya Mears, Worcester State University
“For Cotton, Constitution, and Country: Investigating the Cotton Whig Advocacy of the
Peculiar Institution”
Jonathan A. Hanna, Claremont Graduate University
“Welcoming Ruin: The Civil Rights Act of 1875”
Richard Allan Gerber, Southern Connecticut State University

1:45 Session 18: American Women in the Nineteenth Century (SAB 309)
Chair and Comment: Kristen A. Petersen, Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences

“‘There is a Sex of Brain’: Reading Minds and Bodies in the Early American Republic”
Rachel Walker, University of Maryland
“The Bloomer Campaign: Dress Reform and Citizenship in an Emerging Gender Conciousness”
Patricia L. Farless, University of Central Florida
“What’s in a Name: Madeleine Pollard and Self-Fashioned Identity in the Gilded Age”
Elizabeth De Wolfe, University of New England

1:45 Session 19: Milestones in the History of Maine (SAB 308)
Chair and Comment: Lisa Wilson, Connecticut College

“From Slavery to Maine: O.O. Howard, Refugees, and Home and Farm Help”
Candace Kanes, Maine Historical Society
“As Maine Goes . . .The Defeat of Maine’s 1917 Equal Suffrage Referendum”
Anne Gass, Independent Scholar
“Pioneer Territory: Roy Wilkins, Dow Air Force Base, and the NAACP in Maine”
Christopher Tucker, Clark University

1:45 Session 20: Women and Men and Religion: Three Scholars, Three Papers and Two Religions (SAB 307)
Chair and Comment: Cheryl Boots, Boston University

“A Passionate Catholic Revolutionary: Jean-Antoine Maudru, Constitutional Bishop from the Vosges”
Annette Chapman-Adisho, Salem State University
“Connolly vs. Connelly: A Marriage, a Catholic Priest, a Catholic Nun, and Domesticity”
Gayle V. Fischer, Salem State University
“Daniel Alexander Payne: Education Advocate and Reformer”
Shannon Butler-Mokoro, Salem State University

* Denotes undergraduate paper