Research is an act of discovery, and researching the past opens the minds of students to worlds previously unknown. By analyzing primary sources located in traditional or digital archives, history students at Rhodes conduct high-level research with nationally-recognized scholars. Rhodes history faculty have written or edited thirty-one books and published articles in some of the top academic journals in their fields. Those same faculty members train students in the historian’s craft by supervising research projects in 400-level seminars, directed inquiries, the Rhodes Institute for Regional Studies, and the College’s honors research program.
The Department celebrates the research accomplishments of both faculty and students. When a new book is published, a faculty author in the Department lectures to the entire campus community. When students write excellent research papers, professors recommend them for submission to the award winning Rhodes Historical Review, published annually by the Rhodes chapter of Phi Alpha Theta, the history honor society. Students also regularly present their work at national and regional conferences.
Faculty publications can be found in each of the faculty member biographies on the department’s main page.
Here are some recent student publications of which everyone in the department is extremely proud:
Rhodes Historical Review
Rhodes Historical Review 2023
Rhodes Historical Review 2022
Rhodes Historical Review 2021
Rhodes Historical Review 2020
Rhodes Historical Review 2019
Rhodes Historical Review 2018
Rhodes Historical Review 2017
Rhodes Historical Review 2016
Rhodes Historical Review 2015
Rhodes Historical Review 2014
Rhodes Historical Review 2013
Rhodes Historical Review 2012
Rhodes Historical Review 2011
Rhodes Historical Review 2010
Rhodes Historical Review 2009
Honors Research Projects
2023
Patsy Wardlaw
‘The grevaunce that wymmen han in beryng of theire chieldren:’ Emotion and Women’s Childbirth Rituals in Late Medieval England
2020
Joe Angelillo
The Nomination of L.Q.C. Lamar to the Supreme Court: Popular Constitutionalism, the Reconstruction Amendments, and the End of Reconstruction
2020
Jordan Snowden
“The Sherden in His Majesty’s Captivity”: A Comparative Look at the Mercenaries of New Kingdom Egypt
2018
ZongFang Li
China's Alternative: Kang Youwei's Confucian Reforms in the Late Qing Dynasty
2017
Nathaniel Plemons
British Images of West Africa
2014
Phoebe Strom
Defining Dixie: Creating and Deploying Country Music’s Mythic South
2011
Daniel Williford
Colonial Representations, Post-Colonial Aspirations: French Cultural Policy in the Final Decade of the Tunisian Protectorate
2010
Cailin Elise Meyer
Landscape and the Planter Ideal: Planter Class Formation in Fayette County, 1825-1860
2009
Taylor E. Barnes
"An Unprecedented Conversation": The Limits of President Clinton′s Advisory Board on Race
Anthony C. Siracusa, III
Developing an American Ahimsa: The Rev. James M. Lawson Jr.′s Paradigm of Protest
2008
Ashley Cundiff
Contesting the Boundaries of Womanhood: Female Reformers and Sex-Workers in Memphis, 1880-1920
Joseph Doyle
“The Worst Behaved City in the Union” The Impact of the Memphis Riots on Reconstruction Politics
Rhodes Institute for Regional Studies Papers-2015
Maddie McGrady
Battling Memory from Memphis: Elizabeth Avery Meriwether as Guardian of the Lost Cause
Katie Jakovich
“You Have to be Radical to Change a Radically Sick Society:” Robert R. Church, Jr., Maxine Smith, and the Memphis NAACP’s Shift to Direct Action
Ian Hunley
Into the Political Thicket: Baker v. Carr & the Origins of Judicial Reapportionment