Recent Golz Awardees
Ian Morrison '24
2023 Golz Winner
This summer, I interned at the New England Historic Genealogical Society’s (NEHGS) library. I took this internship because I am interested in pursuing a career in library science following my graduation from Bowdoin College, and this internship provided me with valuable experience with and knowledge of the inner workings of a library.
The NEHGS is currently remodeling their physical space, and I was tasked with helping the library to prepare for the remodel. This involved moving books to different floors and departments, in order to clear space for the construction of a discovery center on the first floor. Additionally, I helped barcode, pack, and record books that were being sent off site. Finally, I helped prepare the NEHGS’ microfilm collection for shipment off site. This entailed packing the microfilm in boxes, recording the necessary information, including reel number, title of the collection, and call number, on the box, and finally entering the information into a spreadsheet so that the library could keep track of what was off site.
I also performed other tasks, including preparing the periodicals for use by library patrons. This involved writing the call number and stamping the periodical which indicated that it belonged to the library. Further, I was tasked with performing archival projects. These varied depending on the collection, but I would typically take the material, such as materials donated by genealogists, and categorize the material by topic. The materials would then be prepared for storage or for shipment off site by the archivists.
My internship at the NEHGS was invaluable for several reasons. Firstly and most importantly, this internship provided me with first-hand experience that has helped me to learn more about the inner workings of a library. Additionally, the personal connections I made at this internship were invaluable: I met many librarians, and I was able to ask them questions about their experiences in graduate school and in their careers, which helped me to expand my understanding about what I can expect in my first few years out of Bowdoin. I do wish that I was able to interact with the patrons of the library directly, which was limited due to the remodel, but this internship was, nonetheless, a great way to spend my summer.
Faculty Mentor: Professor Patrick Rael, Funded by the Alfred E. Golz Fellowship
Seth Gorelik '25
2023 Golz Winner
This summer, I was fortunate to create a website (https://courses.bowdoin.edu/echoes-of-the-steppe/) that delved into the intriguing intersection of Soviet nuclear history and the consequential displacement and disruption of native communities. My personal connection to this subject runs deep as my parents emigrated from Kiev, Ukraine, and Vilnius, Lithuania—regions that were once under Soviet rule. Their experiences of enduring religious and social persecution have deeply influenced my commitment to understanding and addressing the harm inflicted upon these communities.
While some have questioned if Kazakhstan would ever successfully bury its nuclear past, I hope to demonstrate that we would be remiss to dismiss it. The narrative of Soviet nuclear testing in Kazakhstan is undeniably one marked by suffering, its traces etched into the DNA of the local population, even generations later. But it is also a tale of immense resilience and strength. Through this project, I aimed to present a comprehensive and accessible exploration of the often-overlooked or misunderstood history of life on the Kazakh steppe during an era of nuclearization and militarization orchestrated by the Soviet regime. It was my goal to look at a combination of science, culture, politics, and history to examine the legacies of nuclear testing that shows something more complicated than just “a bloodless conflict.” By taking a comprehensive approach, I explored themes of environmental ruin, the Kazakh imagination, political turmoil, and internal colonialism––of which sacrifice zones and necropolitics are one facet. I firmly believe that by shedding light on a history shrouded in secrecy (and questioning why this may have been the case), this endeavor has the potential to give agency to a peoples that have long been denied it.
The format of the blog posts on this website was deliberately designed to steer clear of intricate and complex language, ensuring that the information provided is easily understandable and straightforward. By presenting bite-sized, digestible tidbits of knowledge, I sought to avoid any confusion or misleading interpretations. Employing RStudio as a powerful tool, I harnessed scientific data to craft a compelling series of maps woven throughout the blog posts. By delving into the data, analyzing it through data visualization techniques, I hoped to provide a clearer and more engaging presentation of the complexities surrounding what is indeed a very complex history. Through accessible writing and concise explanations, I strove to make this veiled history known to a broader audience.
I would like to thank Professor David Hecht for seeing this project through its many stages. He has been and will surely continue to be a role model for me. I also want to share my appreciation and gratitude to the Bowdoin History Department for giving me the resources to design a project capable of combining my interest in both the natural sciences and humanities. Few other opportunities would have allowed me to incorporate my native language ability, computational and scientific skill sets, and historical background into a cohesive product. Thank you.
Faculty Mentor: Professor David Hecht, Funded by the Alfred E. Golz Fellowship
Yaseen Ahmed '23
2022 Golz Winner
This summer, with the generosity of the Alfred E. Golz Fellowship, I was able to conduct a project looking at my own family’s experiences migrating from India to Pakistan after the Partition of 1947 and the decades that followed. Advised by Professor Rachel Sturman and building on the material that I had learned in her Spring 2022 course The Making of Modern India and Pakistan, the core of the project centered around practicing oral history, primarily through interviews conducted with my grandmothers on each side as well as a great-uncle and -aunt over the course of a ten-day visit to Chicago. Through these interviews, I was able to engage with and better make sense of the stories that I had been hearing for my entire life while also being exposed to new elements of both the privileges and the traumas that they experienced, as well as the ways that they had affected them, in a way that I had not been as a child.
While the shape of my final product morphed a lot over the course of the summer, I came away with transcripts and audio recordings of my interviews with my family, along with a consolidated set of notes chronicling their lives and experiences as they had told them. In doing so, I was able to better sum up the insights I had gained into their respective experiences as well as those of their family members. In addition, I worked with Professor Sturman to write a seven-page personal essay on my experience conducting these interviews and how it helped me get a better understanding of my Pakistani heritage. By engaging with stories of my forbears, and particularly my great-grandfather after whom I am named, I was able to critically reflect on my own experience with my name, my brownness, and my relationship to Islam in relatively new ways.
I am extremely grateful to have been granted this opportunity through the Golz Fellowship to fit my family’s experiences within the historical contexts I’ve learned about through coursework in the Department, and I’m thankful for the ways I’ve been able to grow through this project with the help of Professor Sturman.
Sophia Blaha '24
2022 Golz Winner
This summer I set out to understand how revolutionary groups in the 1960s and 70s used myth to create and enact social change. More specifically, I was looking at how these revolutionaries set about deconstructing the Western myth model of colonization as the gift of civilization. The presence of this Western myth was first researched by Anthropologist Gannanath Obeyesekere. In his book, Mythmaking in the South Pacific, Obeyesekere coins the term myth models, which are persistent, archetypal narrative structures that we first attach to historical events and which then, because of their prevalence in our perception of the past, come to inform our perception of the lived present. The myth model of colonization as the gift of civilization, for example, was constructed by the West to excuse and rationalize their colonizing past, and was then naturalized into an understanding of their actions in the present. A dominant myth model is thus as much, if not more, of a reflection of the current time than it is on that historical narrative.
Before this summer, I had researched the impetus and implications of this particular myth model of colonization, and as the summer started, I investigated its attempted destruction in the 1960s. I was particularly interested in the Tricontinental magazine as a resource for this investigation. The Tricontinental was a publication out of Cuba which included articles, pamphlets, and essays by revolutionary thinkers from around the world. I found a collection of these periodicals in the Freedom Archives out of San Francisco and worked with the archive to analyze the language they used to talk about this Western myth of colonization as the gift of civilization.
I traveled down to San Francisco to visit the archives and begin the second phase of this research. The first day I got there, I parked my car in Oakland and when I returned to it, the back window was busted in and my backpack was stolen out of it. The books I was reading, the articles I had printed, quotes I had pulled, the journal I was writing in, my laptop, camera, all of it was stolen. I walked into the archive with a pen and a borrowed legal pad. Instead of starting my research over, I shifted my focus. I turned from the more concrete, analyzing the language and actions of revolutionaries in the context of this myth model, to the more philosophical. I started asking: what exactly are myth models? Do I accept that we can and do imbue a historical narrative with such power that it approaches myth and starts to inform our perception of the present? What does this mean for how we tell history? For any premise of objectivity, or truth, or the relenting of biases?
These questions led me to a discussion of collective memory, community and identity creation, the role of the state in historiography, nostalgia, memory and agency, among many other rabbit holes. I ended up with a conviction that all perception is a construction. Both our understanding of history, of “what really happened,” and our perception of what is happening now is a construction of our imagination and the narratives we consume. Myth models are our way of distancing ourselves from the agency of this construction. The historical narrative of the myth model is constructed in the present, but by positioning it as a past event when we draw on it and act on it in the present, place the agency of our actions within the history that we’re drawing from. Instead of creating our own present narrative, we’re becoming one in a long line. Ultimately, my investigation of myth models informed my understanding of the discipline of history as a whole and showed me how we use our perception of history to construct our present.
Tom Brockett '24
2022 Golz Winner
I used the Golz Fellowship to support my work this summer on the Digital Observance Project, an online database and interactive map that I am helping to develop that will enable new approaches to studying the late medieval European religious reform known as the Observance Movement. This movement, though little-studied, lasted from the fourteenth to the sixteenth centuries and emphasized a stricter commitment to the rules of the various Catholic monastic orders (i.e. an increasing level of austerity among monks and nuns), and set the stage for the subsequent Protestant reformation. The Digital Observance Project is led by Kathryne Beebe, Associate Professor of Medieval History at the University of North Texas.
I worked on the project previously, in the summer of 2021, conducting research remotely to gather the name, order, gender, latitude, and longitude of 207 convents (monasteries and nunneries) in the region surrounding Tübingen, Baden-Württemberg, Germany, where Catholic monasticism was prevalent in the Middle Ages. I started my work this summer with a remote meeting with the University of Tubingen’s Institut für Geschichtliche Landeskunde und Historische Hilfswissenschaften, where I would soon be based, explaining my work last summer and presenting my findings to date.
Using my Golz Fellowship funds, I traveled to Tübingen this summer to continue my research, the majority of which involved seeking evidence about each of these convents’ involvement in the Observance, and if they did reform, the date of that reform. Whereas the convent data I had collected last year is easily accessible online, information on such convents’ potential involvement with the Observance movement can almost never be found online. Therefore, I utilized the specialized library of the Institut für Geschichtliche Landeskunde und Historische Hilfswissenschaften, which is dedicated to the regional history of Baden-Württemberg, to attempt to determine each convent’s date of Observant reform, or lack thereof.
The process of determining whether each convent participated in the Observance was very time consuming, because I was examining multiple sources for each convent, all of which were written entirely in German. These sources mainly consisted of books containing centuries-long histories of entire districts, or landkreis, and I had to locate the sections of these books discussing a specific convent in a specific town in the landkreis and subsequently search that section for oftentimes subtle or indirect references to the Observance. In addition, because the Observance is oftentimes overlooked by historians, I had to determine if the source I was consulting for a specific convent was likely to mention the Observance even if it was in fact involved.
As a result, I was able to determine the reform dates, or confirm the lack thereof, of 36 convents. Of these 36, six were Observant. One of these Observant houses was Franciscan, three were Franciscan Tertiary, and two were Augustinian Hermit. Three were male and three were female. The first reformed in 1446 and the last in 1580. Although more research must be completed to draw reliable conclusions about the relative success and rate of growth of the Observance movement in the region, an important insight can already be seen from the results of my research. Namely, the Observance spread to a much smaller proportion of convents in the region than scholars have been led to believe. Observance scholars in the past have tended to focus on larger convents and ignore smaller convents, and I have found in my research that these small convents are much less likely to have become Observant than large ones. I have, for example, encountered in my research many seemingly overlooked convents known as Waldbruderhauses, or forest brother houses, none of which were Observant. Observance scholars in the past have produced analyses indicating that around half of the convents in the region of my study were Observant, but it seems based on my initial results that if these small convents were to be included in the analysis, the resulting proportion of Observant houses would plummet.
The documents I have produced during my work on the project include a spreadsheet containing each convent’s name, gender, order, coordinates, and reform date if applicable, a document of notes on each
convent I researched including the citations of the sources I examined and, if the convent did reform, the quotation of the passage indicating its reformed status, and a detailed step by step methodology to instruct future participants on the project how to continue its research. The information compiled in the spreadsheet and notes document will ultimately be uploaded to the Digital Observance Project’s online database for use by scholars in this field and related fields. I also had the opportunity to talk to the directors of Germania Sacra, a research project currently based at the Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen, whose digital sources I consulted to both form the list of convents I would then research in the library, and collect the basic geographic, order, and gender data on them. We discussed potential merging of our data with their database. During my eighth and final week of my fellowship I coordinated with Professor Beebe about the future of this project, including that potential collaboration with Germania Sacra.
Emma Hargreaves '23
2022 Golz Winner
With the generosity of the Golz fellowship I was able to spend my summer investigating early 20th century nationalist movements in Ireland and Bengal. This was a continuation of previous studies: abroad, where I studied Irish Nationalisms with a Doctorate of Philosophy student at Wolfson College, Oxford and at Bowdoin College, where I noticed many resonances between Irish and Indian modern history in Professor Rachel Sturman’s “The Making of Modern India and Pakistan'' course. I began my project curious about the flow of ideas and information between anti-imperial actors in Ireland and Bengal and then conducted a three part study, narrowing my focus as I investigated. First, I explored secondary works by historians already studying connections between Ireland and India. Then, I sought out primary works by authors from Ireland and Bengal writing between 1916 and 1922 to begin my own analysis. I found that similarities between the actions of revolutionaries in Ireland and Bengal were most often the result of homogenous colonial policy, as opposed to posits of previous historians, who suggested that Bengali Independence fighters used Irish Republicanism as a blueprint. The key difference I found between my secondary literature review and primary analysis was a dialectic, as opposed to didactic, relationship between Irish and Bengali actors for Independence.
In order to more fully develop this theory, I entered into the third and final piece of my project: an in depth analysis of two revolutionary autobiographies: Micheal Collins’ The Path to Freedom and Barinda Kumar Ghosh’s The Tale of My Exile. The texts are an interesting point of comparison and contrast because they share an incredibly specific genre—they are both revolutionary autobiographies written in 1922 by nationalist ex-convicts following the partition of their home by the British Empire. In the texts, Collins and Ghose imagine polities that build national identity outside of the empire. They both subvert racializing English rhetoric, and do so with distinct strategies. There are similarities, such as using similar weapons of the weak against the same imperial power, and many differences in their conceptions of what it means to be patriotic, the purpose of education, and the shape of the ideal citizen.
In my findings, a paper framed by Paulo Freire’s definition of education as “an act of knowing, a political act and an artistic event,” I define Collins and Ghose as educators. I argue that Collins and Ghose utilized the form of autobiography to artfully articulate their politics, giving narrative form to historical understandings that counter colonial justifications of occupation. This lens allows for historical inquiry that honors the distinct and liberative aspects of their imagined nations while also analyzing how both educators forge polity along lines of exclusion particular to their regional, class, caste, and racial backgrounds. While seeking freedom through self-governance, comparative inquiry also illuminated how both men sought to maintain imperial power structures which benefited them.
I found that study of Ireland and Bengal as dialectically related yields opportunities to more clearly understand the nuanced relationship between nationalism and imperialism, relevant themes to the larger historical pursuit of postcolonial and decolonial understandings of the past. Further, the Golz research fellowship allowed me to blend my interest in education and history, and I will continue to do so as a history teacher after graduating from Bowdoin. I will bring what I learned about using personal narratives as primary sources to my students so as to humanize how they learn about the past and confront students with complex issues, such as the often ironic shifts of boundaries and power.
Anibal Hustad '22
2022 Golz Winner
This summer I conducted archival research in the American Youth Hostel Association (AYH) archives at UMass Boston. The sources in the collection ranged from a group of loose hostel photographs with a little description to a collection of AYH magazines published bimonthly for over two decades. My research used these sources to explore why the AYH began to focus on developing hostels in major American cities during the 1970s. The archives revealed that the AYH National Board’s goals of revenue generation and national recognition led to a gradual shift away from the AYH’s original mission of creating an expansive cross-country hostel network. Due to the success of the Washington DC hostel and other international urban hostels, the AYH believed that the best way to meet its goals was to respond to a perceived demand by foreign visitors for hostels in major American cities. I argue that the focus on developing urban hostels reflects a shift in the AYH’s educational mission. Teaching self-reliance and an appreciation of the outdoors became less important than facilitating the hosteler's exposure to people from diverse backgrounds.
Andrew Bastone '22
2021 Golz Winner
I used my Golz grant to research gentrification in Bushwick, a neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York. For most of the 20th century, Bushwick maintained an overwhelmingly Latino population, but over the past two decades, the neighborhood has become increasingly younger and whiter. Using Social Explorer, a data aggregator for the Census and American Community Survey, and New York City government databases including ACRIS and BIS, I worked on examining the methods of how gentrification took place in the neighborhood.
Except for a section in northwest section of the neighborhood, most gentrification transpired without buildings being razed and rebuilt. This is largely a result of most structures in the neighborhood being at or near their Available Floor Area Ratio (FAR)—meaning landlords were forbidden from tearing the buildings down. Without the permission to demolish buildings, landlords increased rent precipitously, and often turned to intimidation tactics like persistent building maintenance to drive lower-income tenants out.
I collected rent and building data, landlord information, and listened to oral histories—including one from a local playwright who conducts taxi tours about gentrification—in order to ultimately work on a map chronicling the changes in the neighborhood. I am still interested in conducting an oral history component and speaking with more Bushwick residents to enrich my work, so I may expand my current research into an honors project.
Nicolas Bower '22
2021 Golz Winner
With the help of the Golz Fellowship, I created a podcast using interviews with former youth activists during the Bahamian Independence movement. The purpose of my research was two-fold: to provide an alternative perspective into 1960s/70s Bahamian political thought, and to discover the nature and impact of youth activism in The Bahamas.
I began my research with a literature review of 1960s/70s Bahamian history. This gave me an overview of the defining tensions of the time, particularly the intersection between issues of race, representation and domestic policy. I found the most salient political tension to be the battle between the ruling United Bahamian Party, a predominantly white party with significant economic power, and the Progressive Liberal Party, a predominantly black party vying for a more progressive agenda, particularly in areas of healthcare and education. The dynamism of the 1960s made the decade an exciting time in the Bahamian political imagination.
I interviewed several former members of Unicom, the largest and most influential youth activist group leading up to Independence in 1973. Among my interviewees were the former president of Unicom, founding members of the Bahamas’ only socialist party, and one of the youngest elected members of parliament in Bahamian history.
Perhaps the most revealing piece of Unicom’s history is its disintegration—a story missing from current sources. Leading up to the 1973 general election, the PLP invited Sir Franklyn Wilson, a prominent Unicom member, to run as a candidate against the UBP. This invitation prompted a landmark meeting to discuss the nomination and discuss future plans. While many members were optimistic about the nomination, a small group disavowed aligning with the PLP, as they thought the party was far too moderate. This splinter group formed into the Vanguard Nationalist and Socialist Party.
The interviews also revealed the global nature of political discourse at the time, even in an isolated island nation like The Bahamas. The Bahamian youth of the 1960s discussed the African socialist movement, Latin American liberation theology and the Black Power movement. They read works from all around the world—from Marcus Garvey’s memoirs to Franz Fanon’s anti-imperialist essays. They drew conclusions about their leaders by comparing them to Tanzania’s Nyerere and Cuba’s Castro.
It was energising to hear first-hand of the enthusiasm that Unicom’s members held for the future of The Bahamas. Many members went on to become leaders in politics, business and civil society. Indeed, the founder of Unicom, the Rt. Hon Perry Christie served two terms as Prime Minister of The Bahamas. Unicom is an inspiring story of youth uniting on the search for solutions to issues in the nation: a story that is all the more important because of the rising challenges to achieving economic development as a small-island developing nation.
Hafsa Hossain '23
2021 Golz Winner
Recasting and Healing the Bodies of the Bhopal Gas Leak
This summer, I had the opportunity to conduct research on the Bhopal Gas Leak of 1984. My research originally started with the exploration of the medical discourses around the gas leak and how medical narratives, addressing toxicity in victims’ bodies, intersect with the historical narratives of the gas leak. In addition, I was interested in understanding the plural conceptions of the body that emerged from the gas leak where the body became intertwined with soil, food, and the chemical ecosystems that it was ingesting and existing in.
As I started my research, I found two major themes: impact of pesticide production toxicity on the environment as well as toxicity of methyl isocyanate gas (MIC) on human bodies. The gas leak’s notoriety as the worst man-made disaster at the time attracted worldwide attention as questions about ethics of the operation of chemical industries emerged/ The ethics of the industries that were once associated solely with progress were being called into question. Despite the sensational publicity the leak received, there were gaps in the documentation of and scientific data for the environmental and bodily toxicity that resulted from the gas leak. One of the major sources I used for my research was an extensive database composed of Bhopal Court Documents, from the University of Wisconsin Law School Digital Repository. Interestingly, I found that legal documents surrounding Union Carbide’s culpability was more readily available than hose about the medical effects from the toxicity to bodies. The gaps in scientific and medical knowledge about how exactly MIC gas interacted with human bodies allowed for the negation of responsibility from Union Carbide. The collusion of the corporation with supposed medical opinion led to the defects of the body, derived from toxicity, to be negated and underplayed. Therefore, my focus sharpened as I wanted to foreground the voices of Bhopal citizens and their experience of viscerally experiencing the chaos of the leak and involuntary undergoing bodily toxicity.
Lastly, gender emerged as a category of analysis for how industry transformed bodies into sites of contestation. A crucial source in probing the women's voice and understanding the social positioning of women was Suroopa Mukerjee’s Surviving Bhopal. Her use of oral testimonials from women who experience the gas leak highlighted how the story of an event can be told in countless ways. However, the dominant narrative of the gas leak was one driven without the centering of survivors and had become a story about “unfortunate” mismanagement of American industry in India. Therefore, in gathering materials and sources for my website, I aimed to construct a counter narrative where brown bodies can be recast and rearticulated as bodies that underwent trauma and need healing and rehabilitation.
Caroline Poole '22
2021 Golz Winner
Policy Horizons Canada – The Future of Languages in Canada
With my Golz Fellowship this summer, I completed a foresight internship at Policy Horizons Canada, a Canadian Government organization which specializes in strategic foresight. This organization serves the federal government and its agencies across Canada to generate knowledge about the major policy points and anticipated economic, social, political, and scientific concerns of the next ten to fifteen years. Horizons adopts the foresight method to explore a range of plausible, alternative futures and identify the challenges and opportunities that may emerge.
My primary role as intern was to carry out an independent foresight study on a topic of my choosing. My project on the Future of Languages in Canada involved dynamic research on a variety of potential sources of change and disruption on Canada’s linguistic composition and the intersections of language, technology, identity, and community building. I carried out my eight- week project by accelerating a typical foresight timeline; the first stages involved defining the scope of my study, summarizing key linguistic assumptions held by Canadian policymakers, and scanning a variety of sources, websites, and networks for potential weak signals of disruption. Using these insights, I created a system map outlining key relationships and forces in Canada’s language system including different linguistic hierarchies and technological transformations. Throughout these early stages, I met with many of my colleagues to gather their insights and feedback on my project. I then distilled five primary change drivers based on my understanding of Canada’s languages to outline where transformative changes are unfolding. At this stage, I moderated both a Scan Club meeting and a cross-impacting exercise on my change drivers to distill further potential linguistic consequences. To conclude my study, I produced a report which outlined my research and offered potential challenges and opportunities for Canadian policymakers to consider when designing resilient language and communication-based policies.
My choice of subject was informed in part by my Honors research: questions of language and linguistic sovereignty are crucial in the context of the Quebecois sovereignty movement in the 1960s and 1970s. By studying language through strategic foresight, I have gained new insights into what dynamics shape linguistic identities and how Canadians construct identities and communities, and make sense of their realities. I hope to bring these new insights to my work this fall.
In addition to my own independent research, I participated in a variety of projects and initiatives throughout the organization. For example, I took part in a number of weekly Scan Club meetings to gather insights on weak signals of disruption. These signals covered a wide variety of topics including artificial intelligence, fitness drones, deep fakes, smart home design and sensemaking. I also completed cascade diagram exercises led by the OECD over Zoom, tested vulnerable sensemaking assumptions with the Social Futures team, and networked with many of my colleagues across Policy Horizons.
This experience was invaluable by connecting me with accomplished policymakers and foresight analysts in Canada with a range of expertise. Many of my colleagues provided me with ideas and
advice for my own career path in the Canadian public service, something which I hope to pursue after graduating from Bowdoin. Furthermore, this experience proved that my research and writing skills as a history student are widely applicable, even in a future-oriented context.
Joseph Rubsamen '23
2021 Golz Winner
During the Alfred E. Golz summer research history fellowship, I began investigating the changing role of medical knowledge, biotechnology innovation and education, community reaction, and public policy legislation response to the 1918 pandemic in Maine. In addition, I began looking at the pandemic historiography, medical innovation, and public response from the New England seventeenth century virgin soil epidemics to the current COVID-19 pandemic. I began this by investigating the relationship between medical innovation in knowing disease, biotechnology advancements in treating disease, and patient care shaped by disease outcomes. I am looking at community survival and infection data, primary source medical literature from the Medical School of Maine curriculum and archival records, medical peer-reviewed literature, documentaries, personal journals, and newspapers.
The project began with an overview of pandemics that impacted Maine from the original settlement with the transmission of virgin soil diseases to the current COVID-19 pandemic. I focused on the 1918 H1N1 and COVID-19 pandemics and the connections between the medical, community, educational, and policy responses. I began to evaluate the diseases, biomedical technologies, patient care, and treatment outcomes through case studies from journals, correspondence, and opinion pieces from the Medical School of Maine.
This project works to grapple with the differences between the 1918 and COVID-19 pandemic response in terms of medicine, policy, education, and public sentiment. Furthermore, comparison to past pandemics underscores the disease outcome, medical development and knowledge, and policy shifts from a normal societal order to a pandemic-life new order. I am continuing this research in Professor McMahon’s 3000-level seminar: “Community in America, Maine, and at Bowdoin.” I look forward to finishing the research and writing my findings during her course this fall and beyond.
Hayden Weatherall '22
2021 Golz Winner
As a Golz fellow, I set out to study the 110-year history of the Sylvina W. Beal, a knockabout fishing schooner built in East Boothbay for Charles H. Beal of Jonesport. My goal was not simply to provide a documentation of the vessel’s long career. More precisely, I strove to explore the people and events it witnessed, using the vessel as an historical portal. Thus, I found myself researching Maine coastal communities through time, with a wooden sailing vessel as a focal point: the village of East Boothbay and its hub of shipbuilding activity, the Maine fishing scene of the twentieth century, and the collective that is the people of the Maine coast, from the turn of the century through today.
My research consisted of physical documentation aboard the vessel at the Essex Shipbuilding Museum; consulting historical archives at the Boothbay Historical Society, Maine Maritime Museum, Penobscot Marine Museum, and other historical institutions down the coast; and exploring accounts of the people who worked, owned, or knew of her throughout her career.
Built in 1911, the Beal saw a variety of uses as a herring seiner, mackerel fisherman and lobster smack under the ownership of Charles H. Beal, until she was sold to the Seacoast Canning Co. There, she carried sardines from Passamaquoddy Bay to canning factories in Eastport. After the Second World War, under the umbrella of the R.J. Peacock Canning Co., the Beal worked out of Lubec and Portland until the late 1970s. In 1980 she was sold to John Worth of Belfast, where she entered service as a windjammer. She has remained in that line of work under a variety of owners ever since.
The nature of my research made Route 1 my right-hand man. I enjoyed following the Beal through her history, from her launching site at the Frank C. Adams yard in East Boothbay to her homeport at Beal’s Island, and from the quays of Lubec and Eastport to Brown’s Wharf in Portland, and so on. I made it a goal to get a feel for both the landscape she witnessed and for the human lives she touched.
Currently, the Beal awaits a communally funded, volunteer-driven rebuild that will begin in the spring of 2022, led by shipwright Harold Burnham of Essex, Massachusetts. She is the oldest auxiliary knockabout fishing schooner in North America and will be one of two Maine-built fishing schooners known to remain.
Theodore Danzig
2020 Golz Winner
This summer, I used my Golz Fellowship to research the objectivity question in contemporary historiography, with special focus on American history. In particular, I analyzed how the interplay of the historian’s epistemological, ideological, and methodological stances affects his understanding of objectivity in history. In doing so, I sought to develop my own position on the objectivity question, and in a broader sense, have tried to get at what studying and practicing history are really for.
Through my research, I learned that the ideal of objectivity in history has had enormous staying power since the professionalization of the discipline in the nineteenth century. I began by examining the classical historicism of the great German historian Leopold von Ranke, who famously wrote that history should be told wie es eigentlich gewesen, or “as it actually happened.” Ranke believed that the historian should let the facts speak for themselves, and that he should not impose his own values on his interpretations of the past. However, in analyzing Ranke’s writings, as well as the writings of many of his ideological descendants who claimed to adhere to the creed of objectivity, I found that all too often, objectivity has simply meant reinforcing dominant narratives and reifying traditional power structures.
As an alternative to Ranke, I was drawn to the “value-laden historiography” of New Left historian Howard Zinn, who proclaimed that, “the historian cannot choose to be neutral; he writes on a moving train.” While Zinn has been much reviled for his supposed politicization of history, I found his position on the objectivity question far more intellectually honest than any other I came across. Attempting to define my own stance, I would say that having a politically committed author (as long, of course, as he follows a sound and rigorous methodology) does not detract from a historical work, but rather clarifies and enriches it.
Sebastian de Lasa
2020 Golz Winner
This past summer, I was fortunate enough to receive the Golz Fellowship, a grant which allowed me to research the history of nationalism in the Basque Country and Ireland. I chose these two regions for a multitude of reasons. They are social outliers within Western Europe; the Basque being an indigenous group to the Iberian Peninsula that predate Roman, Visigoth and Moorish settlement in the region, while Ireland is the sole former colony in Western Europe. The strong sense of national identity in both regions was greatly influenced by the suppression, subordination, and mistreatment from the ruling powers, the Spanish and British Empires respectively.
I conducted my research in a two-pronged fashion: analyzing the history of nationalism and theories of how national identity develops, and reviewing the history of Ireland and the Basque Country, specifically focusing on the past two centuries. Through my research, I determined that while the populous of both regions were attracted to nationalism as a means of resisting the powers that aimed to suppress them, the means and the basis in which a national identity was constructed were quite different. For the Basques, national identity was considerably influenced by their language, which was notably banned from being spoken or published under the Franco regime. To consider oneself to be Basque one must speak Basque; therefore, over the 19th and 20th centuries the Basque language became a means of resisting against the fascist government and their conceptions of a unified Spanish nationality, which Basque people were greatly opposed to. Irish nationalism was influenced by the Irish language, but not nearly as much as the Basques—the formation Irish identity relied more on religious sectarian affiliation and geographical significance. Irish nationality was significantly influenced by lineage and culture, which was easily traced because of the physical separation of the island of Ireland.
The second goal of the project was to use ArcGIS, a mapping software, to create interactive maps that depict a timeline of events relevant to the creation of the Irish and Basque identity. These events would include rebellions (the Easter Rising), instances of state oppression (Bloody Sunday and the bombing of Guernica), and moments of key cultural significance (the founding of the Basque Nationalist Party and Sinn Fein). Unfortunately, my efforts to create these maps were hindered by COVID-19, as I was unable to access school computers and did not have the capacity to effectively run ArcGIS on my laptop. However, I was able to create thorough written timelines detailing modern Basque and Irish histories, in which I detail the crucial circumstances and events that the Irish and Basque nationalities were founded upon.
I plan on continuing my research into Basque and Irish nationalism, specifically looking to understand the role violence and radicalism played in determining the perceptions of national identity among the populous in the two regions. While the infamous Irish Republican Army (IRA) and Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (ETA) have disarmed and dissolved, the desire for a unified Ireland and an independent Basque nation remains, and is well worth further academic research and analysis.
Dennil Erazo
2020 Golz Winner
This summer I spent time researching the nature of modern-day social movements. Initially, I intended to make my research about the core differences between movements from the 1960s and the movements of today. However, I decided to adjust the framework of my project by solely focusing on the movements that arose in light of George Floyd’s murder. I wanted to dissect more closely a present-day issue that was relevant to the history of our present. In my project, I used ArcGIS online, a mapping software, that helped me map and pinpoint all the locations of protests in New York City within the last two months. In total, I recorded 843 protests. I created a timeline map that could filter the data by the date and place of protest. I also created other different types of maps, such as heat maps and static maps, to highlight specific clusters of protest within a specific period of time. I used Story Maps ArcGIS online as my platform to present each map using a story-telling framework. Here, I present my data through a week by week case, starting from the last week of May until the last week of July. Throughout each week, I create an interactive experience for the user by allowing them to use the timeline map to study specific clusters of protest and hotspots in New York City. The user is also able to work and interact with heat maps and static maps as well. Each week highlights important events that occurred in New York City and how protests responded to these events. The user is constantly immersed and interacting with a story of how protests changed and evolved in New York City. I also provide additional photos, links to social media pages, interviews I conducted on the ground with protestors, and videos from news outlets to help construct my narrative.
Before embarking on this project, I hypothesized that social movements today were highly dependent on social media for organization and mobilization. My findings aligned with this hypothesis by showing that social media was an essential tool for organizers and protestors to increase turnouts and spread protest information. However, my findings also communicate that the economic hardships produced by the COVID-19 pandemic, increased frustration among people, which inevitably led to higher protest turnout. Moreover, I anticipated a spontaneous nature to these protests, which my findings fully reflect in the first couple weeks of June. Later on, however, protests become more organized and grass-root led, making them less spontaneous. The increased organization of protests led to internal divisions in the movement between coalitions, disagreeing on the methods of mobilization and on who should be the face of the movement. As I hypothesized, these internal rifts have prevented a cohesive, united movement from arising at certain times.
Despite my findings, gathering my data was difficult in the wake of the pandemic. I was limited on the number of people I could interact with for interviews, given that COVID-19 still posed a threat. I was also limited on the amount of protests I could attend because I wanted to keep following social distancing guidelines. In addition, I wanted to use New York City COVID-19 data to see if protests were occurring in COVID-19 hot spots, but much of the COVID-19 data available was inaccurate or unreliable—sometimes COVID death counts were miscounted. One thing I would do differently is spend more time building the story arch surrounding my data. I spent majority of time gathering data and learning how to use the software. Overall, my research experience was rewarding and showed me how to read trends, patterns, and changes in data and what story could be told from these findings.
Diego Lasarte
2020 Golz Winner
This summer I (remotely) conducted research on the two perpetrators of the Boston Marathon Bombing, Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev. I went to the same high school as they did, and grew up in the same neighborhood. The purpose of my research was to find out how two young men growing up in the progressive, diverse community I call home could be successfully radicalized into extremist violence.
I spent the summer reading about the numerous instances of young Muslim men and women growing up in the West and still finding their way to radical Islamic ideologies, with thousands of young people leaving their homes in America, Canada, and Western Europe to join ISIS in the last decade. What I found was that, oftentimes, the exact conditions that one might think would prevent a path to radicalization (an inclusive, diverse space, that is accepting of new ideas and identities) is what drives those like the marathon bombers to radical ideologies in the first place. (In this case, specifically the younger brother, Dzhokhar.) This is due to the unavoidable contradictions of progressive liberalism—it’s shortcomings clashing with the values it espouses—and its inherent failure to provide a satisfactory avenue to address those contradictions.
I found that oftentimes the goals of secular, progressive education systems create sensations of intense anger and confusion (specifically in the children of refugees and immigrants), while providing no logical outlet for those harmful emotions, simply because no such outlet exists in our neoliberal society. This inherent conflict creates a sensation of purposelessness and confusion in those who feel anger and resentment towards the injustices perpetrated by their adopted country, thus planting the seeds of a deep and unfocused anger in many of its students.
Radical Islam proves a clear counter to this frustrating way of thinking about the world. The basic tenets of Islam present a clear and disciplined sense of hierarchy, and a fundamentalist interpretation of the faith maps out a cosmic justice that wages war against the, seemingly immovable, evils of modern society. This reactionary way of thinking is seductive precisely because of our society’s proclivity towards superficial reforms and empty rhetoric, as well as uniquely dangerous in the ways extreme violence can grow out of feelings of meaninglessness and despair. An insistence on saying the right thing, while providing no real avenue for change, is a certain path towards radicalization.
My summer reading list included the works of Moshin Hamid, Frantz Fanon, Michel Houellebecq, Murtazza Hussain, Masha Gessen, and Albert Camus.
Rahul Prabhu '22
2020 Golz Winner
In the summer, I used my Golz Fellowship to create an accessible online repository of queer rights and visibility in India focussing, specifically during this summer, on gay rights. The project is titled “Queering Desh”. Desh, a Hindi word with some similar regional translations, roughly means Nation, but often connotes an intimate connection to a homeland. The project was inspired by a passion to document personal histories of individuals who have lived through a transformative time period in the making of themselves vis-a-vis the making of ‘queerness’ in the nation.
My work entailed conducting oral history interviews with activists, creating archive-quality records of these interviews and designing an online presence that makes these stories accessible. The project allowed me to develop the skills of conducting thorough life history interviews and rigorously document these stories in a way that would make them accessible and readable. This involved researching best practices for oral history audio documentation as well as transcribing and proof reading written documentation of the interview. Furthermore, I developed an ability to deeply connect with the individuals whom I was interviewing, gain their trust, and document personal histories that are powerful even if often unheard.
My Golz project very soon evolved into a deeply reflective project, shown by the fact that my project website is also home to essays and snippets of analyses and reflection on some of the key issues that came about through my interactions and readings. I looked at the complexities of the constitutional right to privacy, some of the interactions between the legal and social histories of gay rights, the emergence of homonationalism, the historical impact of popular media, and the politics that are inherent when ‘queering’ a nation. A memorable component of this project was also learning how to research a community and a history that I was a part of.
My exploration was grounded in primary and secondary source readings, the interviews I conducted, and analyses of public culture including mass media and film. A great challenge about studying a history of the marginalized is that public documentation is often not abundant, and private personal documents are difficult to access. While I had planned to work with QAMRA, an archive in Bangalore that holds a rich catalog of primary sources from India’s queer rights movement, I could not access these physical sources due to COVID-19 pandemic. As a result, publicly available legal documents and news articles, as well as blogs by groups that were active during this time were my major sources for this project.
The project was both personal and academic: it celebrated that I am, as a gay Indian, part of this history and it is an homage to this history that is a part of me. The website serves as a landing site for individuals to learn about the gay rights movement in India, get a glimpse into the state of gay life in the country and begin to think about some of the key issues that come up within this space. The stories on the website not only comment on individual experiences but serve to continue to open up the dialogue on the power of personal, even intimate, stories as artefacts of history. The Golz Fellowship offered me an opportunity that was enriching both academically and personally, and I am extremely grateful for it.
Sarisha Kurup '21
2019 Golz Winner
Major(s): History and Art History
I used my Golz Fellowship to expand my research from my capstone seminar on Memory and the French Revolution. In that class, I developed a thesis that the script of revolution in France has been passed down through generations. This summer, I examined the possibility that the streets of Paris serve to help transmit that script. I used ArcGIS to map phases of revolution in Paris. The resulting map can be filtered by time period or theme, and helps to illustrate how specific neighborhoods grew into the heartbeats of certain ideologies and movements. I examined the ways in which the city contains and projects its own history, serving as something of a living history textbook. I looked at specific time periods, particularly the 1789 Revolution, 1848 Revolution, the 1871 Paris Commune, the 1940 occupation of Paris by the Nazis, and the 1968 student protests. Within these periods, I examined protest routes, local hangouts, barricades, destruction of buildings, and renovations. A key finding of my research was that not only does revolution have a physical imprint in Paris—so does counterrevolution. I began to track the way that governments responded to disruption, from ripping open small streets and creating boulevards that could be more easily policed, to sending in the Versailles army, to holding counter protests. This project helped me to produce a physical, interactive map that will serve as the basis for my eventual honors project.
Ben Ray '20
2019 Golz Winner
Over the course of my study in the summer of 2019, supported by the Golz Fellowship, I conducted research into the local history of Cartagena, Colombia, examining the tension between the city’s Afro-Colombian history and the national narratives of Colombian Independence. The Golz Fellowship allowed me live in Cartagena and to perform interviews, analyze local monuments and statues, and attend various performances that illuminated the role of black independence heroes like Pedro Romero who are traditionally excluded from the story of independence as told by the state of Colombia. I also was able to purchase history schoolbooks created by large companies and distributed to Colombian students, which reinforce certain narratives of white, Spanish-descended patriots. I found that these schoolbooks evolved to be more inclusive of non-normative figures over time, and some local textbooks even centered their stories, yet the lasting impact of criollo-focused rhetoric remains ingrained in the culture of Cartagena, as was apparent in conversations and public life. Localized histories and forms of expression are therefore a deeply important means of identity-creation in the majority Afro-Colombian city, yet tension remains in the conflict between local and national stories. Further, the phenomenon of commercialization complicates the question of cultural identity, as the city has become a hub of white tourism. This gentrification often leads to a performance of local culture that appeals to such tourists and makes authenticity difficult to identify. Studying within this tangled environment allowed me to develop ideas of ways that national narratives can be questioned, and raised further questions about the potentially detrimental impact of performed history.