Gould Library Comps Collection

The Carleton faculty would like to create an electronic repository of all comps papers, accessible on a limited basis. Gould Library will only have your e-comps if you send it to them and submit a permission form. Questions? Please contact: ​comps.group@carleton.edu

Comps papers, 2008-present

Beginning in the 2008-09 academic year, all electronically-submitted comps papers are kept in the Carleton Digital Commons, in case you need a copy of it for grad school applications or other purposes.

Comps Papers, pre-2008

As many Comps papers as we could collect — whether or not they received distinction — are stored in the History Department shared drive.

Distinction Comps Essays, 2006-present

2025-26 Advisers: David Tompkins, George Vrtis

  • Tim Abbott, Black Faces, Pupils, and Bile in al-Jahiz’s Blacks over Whites: Glimpses of Color Prejudice in the Ninth-Century Abbasid World
  • Sylvia Dixon, Ireland’s Nursing Nuns: Imperial Authority and Social Welfare in the Nineteenth-Century Limerick Workhouse
  • Grace Enz, The Power of History to Build a Nation: Tanzania’s Educational Approach to the Zanzibar Revolution
  • Brynn Gaebe, “Where Women with Disabilities are Learning to Write for Each Other”: Community, Disability, Feminism, and Womyn’s Braille Press
  • Jack Gronholz, “Profane Newfangled Talk”: (Im)piety and Innovation in the Discourses of Gregory Akindynos, c. 1333-1348
  • Parker Johnson, Alexander, the Pilgrim King: Refractions of a Classical Legacy in Byzantine and Islamic History
  • Lily Petersen, “I Thought We Were Mates, You Rotten Sods”: Reactions to Discrimination and Resistance to Sectarianism in the Deaf Community of Northern Ireland During the Troubles
  • Joella Shearer, “We are the invisible veterans”: Countermemory in Female Vietnam Veterans’ Memoirs
  • Ellie Simon, Selling Self-Respect: Women, Advertising, and the Politics of Reform in Tamil Murasu, 1936-1940
  • Lucy Watson, Mapping Carleton College’s Acquisition of Dakota Land
  • Hope Yu, Spun through Teeth and Time: Realities of Textile Labor for Koryŏ Women 1100-1392

2024-25 Advisers: Annette Igra, David Tompkins

  • Ruby Becker, Beyond the Spinning Eve: Women’s Participation in the Late Medieval English Wool Trade
  • Sofia Durdag, “I Looked to the Traces Where Love Hides”: The Eternal and the Ephemeral in the Diwan of A’ishah al-Ba’uniyah (d922-1517)
  • Owen Flanagan, Race to the Market: Neoliberalism and Polarization in Czechoslovakia and the Czech Republic (1989-1996)
  • Loren Friedman, Revolutionizing Identity: A Critical Reexamination of The Bolivian Agrarian Reform of 1953, Fausto Reinaga, and the Rise of Indianismo
  • Edward Hayward, The Autumn Harvest: Collective Memory and China’s 1989 Democracy Movement
  • William Johnston, Reflective Drug Dealers: Examining Foreign Merchants in Old Canton
  • Anja Madsen, Space: The Final Frontier? An Exploration of Frontier Themes in Space Science Fiction Films of the Late 20th and Early 21st Centuries
  • Sydney Tirschwell, Brehon Law and Butter-Stealing Witches in Early Modern Ireland

2023–24 Advisers: Annette Igra, Serena Zabin

  • Louisa Grader, “Drunk for a Penny, Dead for Two”: Gin, Gender, Class, and the British State, 1700-1751
  • Scott Hudson, “50% Pornography, 50% Sentimental Dirt, 100% Poison”: Censoring the Films of Marlene Dietrich in Nazi Germany and the Irish Free State
  • Marjorie Mitalski, Melody and Morality: Rousseau’s Music and Philosophy
  • Evan Orjala, Human Nature and Consumerism in a Mechanized World: Promoting Outdoor Recreation to Working Minnesotans, 1910-1929
  • Nicholas Spezia-Shwiff, From Liberators to Conquerors: “Luxuria,” Geopolitics, and Roman Imperialism in the Greek World, 264–146 BC
  • Will Vonderlage, A Polarizing Push: How the 1968 Olympic Protest Efforts Further Fractured the Black Freedom Struggle

2022-23 Adviser: Annette Igra

  • Chris Costello, Pauper Agency in the Irish Workhouse: A Galway Union Case Study
  • Hannah Rosenberg, Swing It On: Resistance, Respectability, and Lindy Hop at the Savoy Ballroom
  • Zak Sather, Visions of a Wisconsin State Prison: State-building and the Rehabilitative Ideal, 1836-1852
  • Dane Swanser, ‘Dear Harry’: Love, Leverage, and Literary Tradition Told through the Gay Worlds of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Dana.

2021-22 Adviser: Victoria Morse

  • Ryan Flanagan, Litigating Freedom: A Comparative Analysis of Freedom Suits in Massachusetts and Virginia, 1763-1806
  • Maddie Gartland, “We Hold These Treasures as Trustees Only”: Lucy Broadwood, The English “Folk,” and the Profession of Song Collecting
  • Rachel Heilbronner, Powder to the People: Growth Management and Environmental Justice in Aspen, Colorado
  • Leah Johnson, Narrating the Nation: Constructions of Identity and Nationalism in Estonian Museums
  • Miyuki Mihira, Pluralizing History and Silence of Hibakusha: Operations of Stigmatized Identities and Memories of Nagasaki Buraku
  • Adam Smart, “Too Wide for a Dominion”: British Sea Sovereignty Dilemmas in the Late Seventeenth Century
  • Yuanhao Zou, The Arabesk Phenomenon: Musical Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Modern Turkey

2020–21 Advisers: Annette Igra, Thabiti Willis

  • Grace Brindle, Between Fascism and Democracy: The Allied Occupation of Sicily
  • Aaron Forman, Far Apart but Never Closer: Diasporic Unity in Twelfth-Century Jewish Travel Literature
  • Isabel Hackett, Imperfect Allies: The Origins of an Egyptian-Soviet Relationship and the Suez Crisis of 1956
  • Spencer Lekki, Violence and the Materiality in the Irish Rising of 1641
  • Rebecca Margolis, Montana’s Indian Education for All Act: Indigenous Survivance in Education Policy
  • Pierce McDonnell, Struggle Between Emancipationist/Reconciliationist Narratives During the Spanish-American War
  • Owen Pasley, White Recession, Black Depression: U.S. Disinflation Policy, Civil Rights, and the Abandonment of Full Employment
  • McLain Sidmore, Imagining the Last Frontier: The Creation and Adaptation of a Frontier Narrative at Alaska’s Kennecott Mines, 1911-1938
  • Benjamin Wightman, The Effects of Ethnic Identity on the Politics of the Taifa Kingdoms
  • Hannah Zhukovsky, Between Two Chairs: Navigating Nationality and Identification in Soviet Azerbaijan, An Oral History

2019–20 Advisers: Annette Igra, Thabiti Willis

  • McIlhaney, Elise, Witches, Wells, and Demons: Popular Perspectives of the Scottish Witch-hunt
  • O’Neil, Evvy, Deathworlds in Kenya: Reframing the Mau Mau War with Necropolitics
  • Rubin, Grace, Rereading the Modern Fairy Tale into Progressive-Era America
  • Star-Lack, Russell, Close to Home: Suburbanization, Residential Segregation, and Jewish-Black Relations in St. Louis Park and North Minneapolis, MN
  • Wilder, Read, Historiography, Institutional Identity, and the Making of a Cluniac Archive: The Case of BnF lat. 17716

2018–19 Advisers: Annette Igra, Thabiti Willis

  • Yuta Baba, Redefining Nature:  Makuzu Tadano and her Bricolage of Thoughts
  • Ryan Baldwin, Constructing Coherence and Moralizing Change: The Cartographic Foundation of Bison Conservation and its Implications
  • Juliette Bobrow, Exhibiting Empire: London’s India Museum as a Contested Site of Imperial Display, 1875-1914
  • Elizabeth Budd, Re-Centering Agency: Hearing the Voices of the Poor in Late 19th Century London
  • Zhi You Koh, Contestations at Ginling College in the Early People’s Republic of China: 1949-1950
  • Russell Li, Debating Ancient History in Early Italian Renaissance: Antiquarian Historiography, Morality, and Politics in the Scipio-Caesar Controversy
  • Wendy Yue Wu, A Daring Quest for Legitimacy: Erich Honecker’s 1986 China Visit: An Analysis of The Relationship between the German Democratic Republic and People’s Republic of China in the 1980s

2017–18 Advisers: Susannah Ottaway, Thabiti Willis

  • Elizabeth (Lizzy) Ehren, Not Set in Stone: Statue and Bust Representations of David Livingstone in the United Kingdom
  • Claire Jensen, In Search of the Perfect Man: Elite Roles and Performed Masculinity in Gaston Fébus’ Livre de la chasse.
  • Emily Marks, Sisters of Exile: Harki Women’s Uprooting and Communal Rebirth at Rivesaltes, 1962-1964
  • Josie Naron, Columbia University’s “Gym Crow” and the Politics of Public Space
  • Avery Naughton, Conservation Portrayed in Black and White: The Smithsonian’s National Zoo’s Representation and Use of the Giant Panda as a Symbol
  • Rachael Sutherland, The Promise of Revolution and the Realities of Liberation: The Nicaraguan Women’s Rights Agenda in the Rhetoric of the FSLN, 1979-1990
  • Alex Wachino, Centralization and Regional Autonomy: The Role of Monetary Policy in Resolving Andalusia’s 1652 Food Riots

2016–17 Advisers: Victoria Morse, Thabiti Willis

  • Chloe Bash, “Popular Patients” and Threats to Colonial Hierarchies: The Representation of Colonial Troops in British Nurses’ First World War Writing
  • Lindsay Brandt, “Where the Church of Christ Would Eventually Flourish”: Isabella Graham and the Transatlantic Origins of American Religious Nationalism
  • Ellie Durling, Setting the Boundaries of Sodomy: Narratives of the Male Prostitute in the German Gay Rights Movement, 1927-1932
  • Nate Grein, From ‘The Valley of Death to Paradise’: The Romantic, Cultural, and Moral Underpinnings of Colonial India’s Medical Topography, 1820-1840
  • Elaine Sundberg, Staging an Archaeological Spectacle in Libya: Leptis Magna and the Establishment of Roman Empires

2015–16 Advisers: Annette Igra, Susannah Ottaway, Seungjoo Yoon

  • Devon Graham, How Do I Categorize Thee? Let Me Count the Ways: Indian Agency in the Creation and Politicization of Identity in the Colonial Census
  • Julia Lisi, Wearing the Robes: Gender Performance, Religion, and Power
  • Isaac Shapiro, Elevated Developments: The High Line and Soft Gentrification on Manhattan’s West Side
  • Tyler Spaeth, Speaking with Drawing, Sketching with Word: Defining Authorship and Knowledge in a Quattrocento Architectural Treatise,  Filarete’s Libro Architettonico (c. 1460-1464)
  • Lindsey Walters, Confronting the History of Slavery: Seeking Retrospective Justice at Harvard and Brown
  • Benjamin Weiss, Transcultural Categories or “Concrete Jungles?” Rethinking Beur Collective Identity and Action in Early 1980s France

2014–15 Advisers: Andrew Fisher, Annette Igra

  • Cory Georgopoulos, Seducible Bodies, Subversive Clothing: Immodest Women and Virtuous Society in Late 18th  and Early 19th Century America
  • Alex Klein, “A Higher Civilization”: The Written Resistance of the White Earth Reservation’s First Newspaper
  • Kaylin Land, Soviet Motherhood in the Gulag, Lived and Remembered
  • Celia Mattison, “No Flag but the Stars and Stripes”: Irish Catholic Schools in 19th c. Chicago
  • Quinn Radich, Mutual Obligation: Wartime Ethics in Theory and Chronicle in the Hundred Years War
  • Rebecca Spiro, “This far West and this far North”: Redefining Black Catholic identity in the Twin Cities

2013–14 Advisers: Annette Igra, Seungjoo Yoon

  • Jonathan Kagan-Kans, The ‘Good’ Nazi: SS-Obergruppenführer Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski and the Role of Morality in the Holocaust

2012–13 Advisers: Thabiti Willis, Serena Zabin

  • Nora Cassidy, The Front Page Farm Workers: The Relationship Between the United Farm Workers and the Print Media During the Delano Grape Strike of 1965-1970
  • Anthony Stoeri, “Make him see that we are French!”: Napoleonic French Soldiers and the Construction of National Identity
  • Stuart Urback, A Playful Evolution: The Transformation of Game Theory* in the United States from the 1970s through the 2000s
  • Herman Zheng, Contested Customs: The Legality of the Mui Tsai in Nineteenth Century Hong Kong

2011–12 Advisers: Clifford Clark, Annette Igra, Thabiti Willis

  • Nicholas Bellos, Crowded Vehicles, Contested Turf: Race-Making and the Everyday on Chicago Public Transit During World War II
  • Isaiah Capel, Institutional and Intercommunalist Revolution: The post-1971 transformation of the BPP
  • Margaret Kanazawa, Resisting the Mantle of the Nabob: Constructing an Imperial Figure in the Gentleman’s Magazine
  • Laura Michel, “Unhappy Children of Iniquity”: The Invention of Juvenile in the Anglo-Atlantic World
  • Robin Reich, “There is no contagion, there is no evil portent”:  Arabic Responses to Plague and Contagion in the Fourteenth Century
  • Lily Sacharow, Contingent Liberty: Congressional Unanimity in the Making of the Declaration of Independence
  • Peter Schlesinger, The “Best Traditions of the Sea?” Contested Heroism in the Manchester Guardian’s Reporting on the RMS Titanic

2010–11 Advisers: Annette Igra, Serena Zabin

  • Mira Alecci Oloffson, Botanic Diversions: Mary Somerset’s Plant Collecting in Enlightenment Science
  • Dustin Goldburger, “This Thing Will Give St. Louis a Black Eye!” The Cold War, Regional Identity, and the Fight to Integrate Jim Crow Schools in St. Louis, MO 1949-1952
  • Zoe Harris, Communities in the Ether: Depression Era Radio & the American Homemaker
  • Hunter Knight, “The Times Demand the Sacrifice of Our Convictions”: Childhood Changed in World War I France
  • Ross McIntire, With Saints on Our Side: Hagiography, Ecclesiastical Authority, & the Maintenance of Timor Sanctorum in Gregory of Tours’ Gaul
  • Logan Nash, Middle-class Castle: Modernism, Gentrification, & Urban Space at London’s Barbican Estate
  • Julio Rodriguez, Resistance under Franco (1959-1975): Exploring the Role of Basque Clergy & Their Involvement with Euskadi ta Askatasuna (ETA)
  • Kristina Taketomo, Home Is Where You Park It:  Cold War Caravans & the Mobile Domestic Space
  • Anna Wada, Imagining a Timeless Unity:  The Moment of Silence in 1930s Japan
  • Roger Yarett, Politics, Progress, & the End of Time: Evangelical Fundamentalism & the Making of a Political Movement

2009–10 Advisers: Clifford Clark, Annette Igra, Victoria Morse

  • Julia Bradley, Nationalism, Islam and the Algerian Future: Elite Conceptualizations of an Islamic Past
  • Collins, Rory F., “What Culture?” Defining National Culture in Tanzania, 1961-1974
  • Andrea Donahue, “We Once More Take the Liberty of Writing”: Ex-Slaves Negotiating  Freedom in Britain’s Sierra Leone Colony, 1791-1800
  • Finn, Samuel A., Blue on Black: A Study of the Oakland Police in the Context of the Black Panthers, HMW/VM
  • Erika Huckestein, “I’ll Never Change, I’ll Always Wear Green”: New Representations of Erin in Irish Nationalist Political Cartoons, 1900-1921
  • Nakamura, Lauren C.,  Incorporation, Rejection, and Re-Imagination: India’s Neo-Liberal Policies and Education Reforms, 1984-2004
  • Joshua O’Brien,  Locating Authority in Carolingian Debates on Image Veneration c. 825: The Case of Agobard of Lyon’s De picturis et imaginibus
  • Katherine Reed, Toward a Standardized Communal Identity: The Muslim Women’s Reform Movement in Late Colonial India
  • Leslie Rutherford, The English Sweating Sickness and Henry VIII: How the King’s Personal Life Shaped Public Health Policy in England
  • Jordan Smith, Jordan B., “More Rude and Anticque than ‘ere was Sodom”: Piracy and the Tavern Community in Port Royal, Jamaica, 1680-1692”
  • Katherine Smoak, Katherine L., Unproductive Women & Troubling Men: Humor and Republican Marriage in Women’s Magazines, 1792-1830

2008–09 Advisers: Clifford Clark, Annette Igra, Susannah Ottaway

  • Keith Carr-Lee, “The Rise and Fall of the Great Illusion”: A Study of the Role of E.H. Carr in the Formation of Modern Opinion about the Work of Sir Norman Angell
  • David Harrisville, Strategy and Survival: Commanders, Crewmen, and the Sherman Tank in World War II
  • David Hirsch, American Imperialists: The Supporters of American Actions in the Dominican Republic and Haiti, 1915-1925
  • Steve Landkamer, The Formation of the National Meiji Elementary School System in Aichi Prefecture, 1868-1879
  • Melissa Langer, The Architecture of Empire in Rabat: Reimagining the Colonial City Under Lyautey
  • Emily Litwin, Nationalism, Feminism, and the Women of Ireland‟s Revolutionary Period
  • Sara Lopez, Rebellion and Celebration in 18th c. Mexico: The Request for a Propaganda Fide Hospice in the Town of Uruapan
  • Wyatt Marshall, Leaving the Arena in Ruins: The Manipulation of Visuality in Early Christian Martyrdom Texts
  • John Olmsted, Poverty, the Pulpit, and the Polis: John Chrysostom‟s Sermons on Wealth & Poverty
  • Alexander Persaud, Rodney, History, and the Dialectic: Rethinking Walter Rodney‟s Marxist Methodology
  • Erica Prochaska, The Imperial World of Verrier Elwin
  • Lucy Robson,  “Reading Past the Label: Exploring Second World War Evacuation in Britain Through the Child‟s Perspective”
  • Emily Tragert, Emily, “Swearing, Roaring and Daming all the Night long”: Prostitution, Promiscuity and Social Order in England 1680-1750”
  • Dominic Vendell, “Feeding the Body, Feeding the Soul: Swami Vivekananda, Religious Universality, and Social Welfare in an Anglo-American Imperial World, 1893-1897”

2007–08 Advisers: Clifford Clark, Susannah Ottaway, Annette Igra

  • John Bardes, Dashikis or Bullets? False Oppositions between Organization US and the Black Panthers
  • Katie Bates, “With so much credit”: The Iconicization of Common Sense
  • Yanging (Claire) Du, Gaitu Guiliu Reform on the Miao Frontier in High Qing Dynasty
  • Peter Fritz, Are You Qualified to be Abbot? A Culture of Leadership and Authority in the Case of Late 12th Century Bury St. Edmunds
  • Peter Lee, How the Fourth Estate Opened Its Doors to Longshoremen: Media and the San Francisco General Strike
  • Jason Perkins, May 1970 in New York City: Student Activists, Construction Workers and the Future of American Society
  • Heather LaChapelle, Museums and Memory: “Remembering Slavery” at the Slave Lodge
  • Yotaro Komatsu, Power and Money: Money Exchangers and Japanese Monetary Transformation, 1858-1879
  • Madelyn White, Soldiers of Liberty: Tirailleurs Sénégalais and French West African Independence
  • Wayne Soon, Subnationalism, Education, Wealth and Power in Fujian and Singapore: Tan Kah Kee and Chen Yi from the 1910s to 1940s
  • Megan Ward, The Queue and the Illustration of Chinese Men in American Pop Culture, 1838-1915

2006–07 Advisers: Clifford Clark, Annette Igra, Serena Zabin

  • Rawdon Bergquist,  Walking in the Forest of Knowledge: King Alfred‟s Soliloquiesand the ninth-century West Saxon Literary Revival
  • Kelsey Barale, “In all ages have not the Saints of God been persecuted?” Memory, History, and Reinterpretation of the Early Mormon Colonies in Mexico
  • Mollie Gurian, Mother Knows Best? The Women‟s Co-Operative Alliance of Minneapolis Creates Professional Motherhood 1917-1932
  • Hanagan, Julia, Fighting the Last War Nationalist Memories in Serbian Americans
  • Amelia Hintzen, No Stage Large Enough. Josephine Baker and the Performance of Social Action
  • Emin Lelic, The making of orthodoxy in early modern Islam using a case study of the Bosnian Hamzeviyya: Comparing Ottoman history, Sufism, and Islamic institutions
  • Sam Lowry, Rules of Illusion: Growth in the Study of Jean Renoir
  • Kathleen Vongsathorn, Saved and Sinner: The Ambiguous Identity of the African Leper as Constructed by Christian Missionaries, 1900-1950

2005–06 Advisers: Clifford Clark, Annette Igra, Serena Zabin

  • Antony Adler, Sailing in Uncharted Seas: European Encounters with Polynesians in the Age of Discovery
  • Emily Brimsek, “Pursue me at law, but I will not give up my property”: Honor, Property Crime, and the Middle Class in Eighteenth Century Scotland
  • Cara Chomski, No Place for Pastoralists: Land Laws and the Ideologies of Development in Tanzania, 1961-1991
  • Meredith Goddard, Paying Tribute to Piracy and Early American Nationalism
  • David Kamin, The Cohesion of the Crusading Army During the Fourth Crusade
  • Annaka Larson, Beyond Mountains and Office Walls: Revolutionary Reconceptions of the Guatemalan Indígena, 1944-1949
  • Ethan Mooar, Nature in the National Parks: Policy and Perception in the Late 20th Century
  • Andrew Tulloch, The Nanjing Massacre Memorial and the (Im)Possibility of Institutionalized Memory
  • Eric Wilson, Shrine, Patron, Icon, Sufferer, Martyr: Visibility in the Lives of the Simeon Stylites and Daniel the Stylite