The Young Historians Conference will be held at Portland State University on Monday, April 28th, 2025. The conference will take place on the 3rd Fl of Smith Memorial Student Union from 8:00am-2:15pm.
The 2025 Young Historians Schedule
8:00 - 8:35 Continental Breakfast
8:35 – 9:10 Smith Memorial Student Union Ballroom (SMSU 355)
INTRODUCTION: Katrine Barber, Professor and Chair, Department of History
SPEAKER: Peter Boag, Professor and Columbia Chair in the History of the American West
PDXScholar Recap Julia Stone, MLIS, Open Scholarship Librarian, PSU Library
9:10 – 10:25 FIRST SESSIONS: Choose from Four
SMSU 338 Wagers, Wounds, and Words Moderator: Professor Thomas Luckett
Orion Souders
Grant
From Bones to Billiards: A History of Gambling and Its Relation to Morality
Madeleine Wallenberg
St. Mary's
From Prison Cells to Parliament: How the H-Block Hunger Strikes Transformed Sinn Fein to Enable Peace in Northern Ireland
Isabel Milla
Riverdale
Panther to Poet: The Mother Behind it All
SMSU 328-29 Stories in Stone to Script Moderator: Professor Loren Spielman
Weston Klein
Grant
Form Follows Function: An Analysis of De Architectura and its Influence
Fiona Weiss
St. Mary's
Prosperity Verses Plague: Two Patrons of Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus
Cain Giacomini
Grant
Lost in Translation: an Analysis of Distortion in Historical Translations of the Upanishads
SMSU 327 Creating Space: Community in Unlikely Places Moderator: Professor Richard Beyler
Madison Alexander
St. Mary's
The Confluence of Millenarianism and Sabbateanism in the Seventeenth-Century Netherlands
Anna Roberts
Grant
Shanghai’s Stateless Immigrants: Anti-Bolshevik Russians in Shanghai from 1917-1949
Seth Waineo
Grant
The Japanese in the State of Sao Paulo Brazil From 1908 to 1942
SMSU 333 Picturesque and Problematic Moderator: Professor Jennifer Tappan
Lucita Ocaña Dessen
St. Mary's
Cuadros de Casta: A Pseudo-Scientific Means of Control and Racial Taxonomy in Colonial Mexico
Tess Larson
St. Mary's
The Not-So-Great Result of America’s Greatest Idea: How Indigenous Americans were affected by the Creation of Yellowstone, Glacier, and Yosemite National Parks
10:35 – 11:50 SECOND SESSIONS: Choose from Four
SMSU 338 Alternative Narratives and Visibility Moderator: Professor Patricia Schechter
June Baeck
Grant
Teaching From Past Example: Various Interpretations of Livy’s Rape of Lucretia
Caitlin Moran
Riverdale
The Role of Feline Goddesses in Advancing Women’s Rights in Ancient Egypt
Katarina Stoll
St. Mary's
“Through Science to Justice” Magnus Hirschfeld’s Role in Queer Liberation
SMSU 328-29 Asia in Collision Moderator: Professor Jennifer Kerns
Audrey Francioch
St. Mary's
The Roots of Ethno-political Strife in Ceylon: The Dividing Power of British Colonialism
Annalise Jones
Grant
Islands in Motion: The Transnational Ties Between Japan and Hawaii, 1885-1945
Dana Kim
St. Mary's
Stalin, Purges, and Japanese Imperial Power: The Losses of Soviet Koreans in Vladivostok
SMSU 327 From Hoover to Horse Trails: Literacy in early Twentieth-Century America Moderator: Professor David Horowitz
Madison Reed
Riverdale
Riding Through the Great Depression: The Impact of Pack Horse Librarians
Andrea Bell
St. Mary's
Oregon’s Compulsory Education Act: Americanism, Nativism, and Assimilation
Brendan Vasanth
Riverdale
How Herbert Hoover Worsened the Great Depression
SMSU 333 Reflections of Humanity Moderator: Professor Katrine Barber
Kate McFarland
Grant
Guidelines for a Good Life: How Morality Tales Have Shaped Communities and Cultural Landscapes
Helen Cruz-Uribe Bandstra
Grant
Reflecting Life Back: The Influence of Mirrors on Human World History
Sophie Durocher
Grant
Face Value: Cosmetics as a Unit of Historical Analysis
11:50 – 12:35 LUNCH in SMSU 355 (Ballroom)
12:35 – 1:50 THIRD SESSIONS: Choose from Three
SMSU 338 Tools of Resistance and Unity Moderator: Professor William York
Sid James
St. Mary's
A Revolutionary Curtain Call: Yiddish Theatre, the Jewish Enlightenment, and the Russian Revolution
Eli Peterson
Grant
From the Magna Carta to the U.S. Constitution: Understanding the Origins of the Rule of Law
Enzo Smith
Riverdale
Cuju: The Ancient Chinese Game That Held an Empire Together
SMSU 328-29 Crime and Punishment Moderator: Brenda Frink
Dylan Plush
Riverdale
Identifying the Significance of John Douglas’ Role in Criminal Psychology
Olivia Cheng
St. Mary's
How the Cheating of East and West Germany Reveals a Global Trend of Doping in International Sports
Leo Novack
Riverdale
Exposing the Truth Behind the Stanford Prison Experiment
SMSU 327 High Stakes: Faith, Control and Consumption Moderator: Professor Natan Meir
Jake McCauley
Grant
A Crucial Western Foothold: Uyghur-Americans in the Fairfax - D.C. Metro Area
Hazel Sims
Grant
Laws of Diet: An Analysis of Laws Concerning Meat Consumption in Judaism, Hinduism, and Islam
Nick Michaud
Grant
Entheogens: The Hallucinogenic Plants That Shaped Religion
1:50 – 2:15 AWARDS CEREMONY
SMSU 355 (Ballroom)
Professor Jennifer Kerns, Department of History
Joy Beckett, Challenge Program Director
The conference brings together PSU’s history department and area high schools that participate in college level history classes, such as the PSU Challenge Program, other dual credit programs, or AP history. Courses include, but are not limited to, American History, Western Civilization, and World History. Courses must include a major assignment that is a history research paper. History instructors select the best of these for the student authors to submit for consideration. A history department lead faculty member works with a jury of history graduate students to assess the submissions and choose up to 30 papers for the presentation.
The conference is organized into concurrent sessions by themes determined by the Jury and lead faculty member. Each session has at least three presenters who have approximately 10 minutes to present their paper. The audience is made up of their classmates and a faculty moderator from the history department. At the end of the presentations, the faculty moderator leads a discussion.
Awards are given for the best papers. Authors of the top papers will be invited to submit their work to PDXScholar, PSU's online repository of scholarly works. To view information about PDXScholar's readership information and number of downloads, click here.
Guidelines for submissions:
- Papers are due by noon on Wednesday, April 2nd.
- Paper format should be a google word doc with editing enabled for saholl2@pdx.edu. If students don't have a google account they can send it as a Word Document
- All submissions must include the research paper, abstract, and title page emailed to saholl2@pdx.edu as one document.
- Every paper should contain the student's name, paper title, school, and history course on the first page of document
Papers from previous Young Historians Conferences can be viewed at PDXScholar. Instructions on how to submit papers can be read here.