Historians study the past in its variety and complexity. With such an analysis, students of history gain multiple perspectives on the present and an aptitude to plan intelligently for the future. Although the lessons to be learned from the past are rarely simple, solutions to present-day problems rest on comprehension of historical forces and events. History deepens our understanding of other peoples and cultures. All courses offered in the History Department seek to examine the issues of race, gender, class, and cultural diversity.
Modified from history.calpoly.edu
Senior Projects from 2016
Hollywood’s Vietnam: How Critics and Audiences Responded to the Vietnam War Genre, Jennifer Freilach
Restoring African Women to History: A History of Pre-Colonial East African Baganda Women, Maria Matovu
Senior Projects from 2015
Reclaiming and Reconciling What Was Originally Ours--Christianity and Feminism: A Concise History, Soquel Filice
The Power of Friendship: Cal Poly’s Contract in Thailand and Reinterpreting Cold War Agency Through Relationships, Sean Martinez
The Repatriation of Mexican-Americans to America, Aaron Ziskin
Senior Projects from 2014
From Our Laps to the Laps of Luxury: The Development of Pet-Keeping in Twenty-First-Century America, Jamie Boonjakuakul
How England won North America: William Johnson and the Importance of Indian Allies in the French and Indian War, David Alexander Clausen
Japanese American Internment: A Historiographical Analysis and Evaluation of Identity, Megan Nicole Manning
Merging the Principles of Occultism and Anarchism, Kevin Todd McLaren
General Efrain Ríos Montt and the Silent Holocaust: A Guatemalan Genocide, Ana Paula Pereira
Pratfalls, Seduction and the Farce of Marriage: How the Screwball Comedy Redefined American Preconceptions of Traditional Feminine Morality, Fletcher Parrott Thornton IV
Senior Projects from 2013
Gaman: How Japanese Americans Persevered in the Face of Racial Injustice 1941-1988, Derek James Koehler
Britain’s Kitchen Front: British perceptions of the food situation and women’s attitudes during the Second World War (February 1942), Marissa Nicole Millhorn
Senior Projects from 2012
An Analysis of Preservation Versus Conservation: The Future of Whaling, Elizabeth Paige Fennie
Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Pornography, Amanda Herman
The Role Of Historic Novels in Understanding Desertion in the Civil War, Caitlin Wright
The Battle for the Mind of Europe: The Ideological Warfare of Orwell, Stalin and Mussolini, Tim Zellinger
Senior Projects from 2011
Failure at Iwo Jima and Okinawa, Kevin Denton
Fahrenheit 451: The Burning of American Culture, David Fox
Women Not in the Kitchen: A Look at Gender Equality in the Restaurant Industry, Rosalie Platzer
A Stroll Down the Dark Side: Ultraviolent Japanese Animation’s Roots in Postwar Japan, Globalization, and Western Consumption, Brian Graham Roberts
Senior Projects from 2010
Keeping History Alive: David McCullough and the Debate Between Popular and Academic History, James R. Allen
Khmer Rouge: Evolution of the Academic Debate, Breanna Atwood
John Garang and Sudanism: A Peculiar and Resilient Nationalism, Matthew J. DeLaney