Negley Prizes Awarded for Year's Best US History Papers
The History Department’s Negley Committee awarded seniors Josephine de la Bruyére, Athena Stenor, Keyu Cao and James Fortin with the Negley prize for writing the best 430 (333) research papers last Thursday, September 28.
The 410/420/430 U.S. History sequence culminates in a final research paper in the spring. After covering centuries of American History, students choose a topic and devote a month to researching and writing the largest paper of their Exeter careers. The sequence is notorious for the intense workload, but many students pull through to write perhaps their best work during their time here.
The Negley Prize is named after Richard and Albert Negley, two brothers and alumni of the Academy who volunteered and died in combat during the second World War. Their parents established a memorial fund to award writers of the best essays on a historical subject under conditions set by the Academy’s History Department.
Instructor of History Aykut Kilinc served as chair of the Negley Committee this year. Composed of members from various disciplines and interests, the committee convened to nominate winners for the award. “The selection process is not easy. Each teacher pays attention to different components. But overall, we look for good narrative, depth, craft of research, evidence and overall presentation,” he said.
Kilinc acknowledged the difficulty of writing the paper, stating, “Just the pure fact that we’re giving students essentially three weeks coupled with logistics and getting feedback to write a long research paper,” he said. “That’s a very tight time period so I’m amazed students get it done and with so much quality.”
Chair of the History Department William Jordan also served as part of the Negley Committee. “The winning papers and many others that didn’t make the cut were probably comparable to undergraduate work at a lot of college institutions,” he said. “We give almost a month of release time and these students went above and beyond what you would expect from a high school student.”
De la Bruyére chose to write about women’s opposition to the 1964 Civil Rights Act through the lens of a string of protective labour legislation in the 1920s that stemmed from the landmark Supreme Court case Muller vs. Oregon in 1908. She noted that the topic was not one that immediately came to mind; she knew that she wanted to write about the law and a case, eventually settling on Muller vs. Oregon, a famous Supreme Court case.
Through her research, de la Bruyére uncovered relatively unknown cases that were all overturned due to Muller’s precedent. There was a lack of outside information on them, and they all quietly faded out of legal relevance; however, because of the standards established in these cases, they partially led to the development of a niche of feminists who didn’t really believe in equal working rights for women or support the Civil Rights Act. De la Bruyére thought of this as the deciding factor for her subject since it tied together so many of her interests—feminism, American labor, law and the ways the legal system can go awry.
Despite the infamy that surrounds the paper, de la Bruyére enjoyed writing the essay. “I loved writing the paper and absolutely loved my topic; every day that I was researching I was excited to be in the library, I was excited to be reading the cases,” she said. She credits her interest in the topic as the reason for her success. “I think that’s the most important part of it. I don’t think there was a dull moment in my research. I was happy to be learning, and I just really, really loved what I was reading,” she said. “The 333 isn’t nearly as daunting as everyone makes it out to be. It can be fun and it can be interesting.”
Stenor chose to focus on the relationship between the African community in the United States and the Black Haitian community in Haiti during the U.S.’s occupation of Haiti in the 20th century. Stenor argued that the U.S.’s occupation forced connection between the two groups and led and contributed to the rise of Pan-Africanism, the idea that black people should bond almost like a family and stand united against their oppressors, regardless of their different origins. The topic interested Stenor as she herself is Haitian-American.
Stenor also believed that the occupation would shape much of recent Haitian history. “In Haiti before the occupation what mattered most was class since there were no whites to compare skin color with,” she said. Stenor noted that colorism, prejudice against individuals of darker skin tones, did exist. “The U.S. essentially instituted Jim Crow Segregation laws on Haiti which forced the Haitians to become aware of their blackness and eventually to embrace it, leading to the rise of the philosophy of Noirisme, a pro-African, pro-black roots philosophy.”
"Be creative with where you find your primary sources and try to populate your paper with as many primary sources as you can. It’s easier to do your own analysis and more fun.”
Stenor enjoyed writing the paper and gave some words of advice for future writers. “It's always better to start specific and broaden outwards. It becomes much easier to research because there are fewer sources and you can go in much broader depth,” she said. "Be creative with where you find your primary sources and try to populate your paper with as many primary sources as you can. It’s easier to do your own analysis and more fun.”
Cao focused his paper on the Sino-American rapprochement and Nixon's visit to Red China. During that time, the United States did not recognize the People's Republic of China. This was because the two countries had fundamentally different ideologies after the communists won the Chinese Civil War in 1950. However, because of the Sino-Soviet split, instead of treating the Cold War as a strictly two-way affair between the capitalist “free world” countries and the communist blocks, the Cold War became multipolar as the conflict and negotiations extended to three sides of a diplomatic triangle.
In addition, Cao explains that the U.S. was no longer the world's predominant superpower. The Soviets achieved nuclear parity by 1968, and the Vietnam War was going poorly. Thus, changing currents of the Cold War and the Soviet Union's relation with the world convinced Nixon to seek improved relations with China.
While Cao acknowledges that it was a bit stressful at times, he says it was a very interesting project and he had a lot of fun with it. Winning the prize to him came as a nice surprise. He says, “I wasn’t really expecting to win anything, but I was just happy to have written a decent paper.”
His advice to future writers? “Pace yourself. Try to set concrete goals each week so you don't end up with most of your work near the deadline.”
Fortin decided to write about the Barbary Wars between the United States and some of the Barbary states, which were Muslim countries in North Africa that relied on piracy to support their economies in the late 18th and early 19th Century. “I chose it because it’s a pretty obscure topic so there wouldn’t be too many resources to search through but there would be enough to actually write a paper,” he said. “I feel like that’s a good way to go about writing a paper, because you have to be focused.”
Fortin sought to demystify the Barbary Wars as many historians have called it America’s First War on Terror. “It could be because you have Muslims attacking American civilians, but I found that there was something missing from that argument,” he said. It seemed to conflate something that happened 200 years ago with things that happen today, and I think you always have to be careful with that. It became clear to me that this was a war about about different economic ideologies, not primarily religious ones.”
Time management was the hardest part of the paper for Fortin. “[The research]’s all very interesting but you have to stick to your schedule if you want to get this thing done without staying up till 1 AM every night,” he said. “It’s hard to then craft it into a persuasive piece, and just figuring out how to order things, cutting things, making sure it makes sense to someone else. The parts that I enjoyed most were trying to share it with people and getting their feedback because I find that super helpful.”
The award came as a surprise to Fortin. “I wasn't really expecting it because I think there’s so many great writers aspiring to be historians here, so it’s a real honor to get this,” he said. “I just think it’s an interesting topic and I hope I did it justice.”