Diaz, Lee, Yang and Zhang Win Negley Prizes
Seniors Elliot Diaz, Jenny Yang and Abby Zhang and upper Suan Lee were selected as this year’s winners of the Negley Prize in U.S. History, awarded to writers of the most outstanding papers written in the history 430 course. The students’ papers covered a wide range of topics: respectively, the declassification of homosexuality as a mental illness in 1973, the U.S. government’s portrayal of the atomic bomb, the response to landmark Supreme Court case Roe v. Wade and the 1912 textile strike in Lawrence, Massachusetts.
The history 430 paper, better known as the “333,” is written in the final term of the U.S. history sequence. Students spend four weeks researching a topic of their choosing from any aspect of American history. Their research culminates in a 333, typically ranging from 12 to 20 pages in length.
At the end of the year, each history 430 instructor is invited to nominate the papers from their classes that they believe should receive a prize. Nominated papers are distributed to every history teacher in the department and each paper is commented on by at least two teachers. History Instructor and Negley Prize Committee Head Aykut Kilinc then reviews the teachers’ feedback and curates the most well-received papers. The Negley Prize Committee, consisting of Kilinc and History Instructors Nolan Lincoln, Betty Luther-Hillman, William Jordan and Michael Golay, then convenes to decide which papers should receive the prize.
The entire process spans over three months during the summer. “The history teachers are so dedicated to their students and to the whole project of research that they’re willing to spend their summer reading papers,” Head of the History Department William Jordan said. At the end, they settled on these four papers.
Diaz wrote about the medicalization of homosexuality in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM). “I originally wanted to look into the attempt of conversion therapy to bring people ‘out,’ but then I started researching why people thought that that could be possible. That led me to the bigger topic of how medicine reconciled homosexuality as an illness,” Diaz said.
Diaz strived to write about a topic that he was deeply passionate about. “I wanted to write about something that hadn’t been written about before extensively. I wanted to do justice to the people who were on the front lines of getting homosexuality out of the DSM,” Diaz said. He recalled reading LGBT pamphlets cover to cover because he had never seen anything like that before. According to Diaz, the process of writing his paper fostered more appreciation for his community’s history.
Yang wrote a paper analyzing the U.S. government’s portrayal of the atomic bomb. “I wrote about the image of the bomb and how during its announcement and in the time leading up to announcement, the U.S. government had been preparing the country in different ways to better embrace the beginning of the atomic age and make the country more receptive to the atomic era,” Yang explained.
During her research, Yang focused on the lasting consequences of her topic. “You can really see that the impact of the U.S. government’s strategic public relations campaign is still affecting us today,” Yang said.
Zhang knew that she wanted to research another landmark supreme court case after writing about Muller v. Oregon for her 332. “I was looking for something along the veins of women’s rights and reproductive rights,” she said. “My paper was about the response to Roe v. Wade and specifically how the male hierarchy of the Catholic Church shaped the abortion debate as we know it today.”
Zhang realized how tangible the effects of the court ruling are. “Their very extreme actions in the decade following Roe really laid the foundation for the pro-life movement and made abortion a political, religious and nationally recognized issue,” she said. “Roe v. Wade is obviously something that is highly relevant to our political landscape today. Over the summer, there was so much coverage about it. I remember weeks into my 333 term, Iowa had just passed their new anti-abortion laws.”
Zhang was surprised to find that abortion was not a national issue until the Catholic Church worked to create an anti-abortion movement following the ruling. Luther-Hillman, Zhang’s 430 instructor, observed how Zhang’s research evolved. “I think that oftentimes the best papers come from research that organically develops where instead of a student beginning the project saying, ‘I have a thesis already decided,’ they explore and come across something that surprises them,” Luther-Hillman said.
Lee, who wrote about the 1912 textile strike in Lawrence, Massachusetts, is the first in Exeter history to be awarded the Negley Prize as a lower. “Before the strike, the diversity of the predominantly immigrant labor pool only hindered unity because of language barriers and general hostility between ethnic groups. Suddenly, none of that mattered,” Lee said. “The fact that the strike was led by immigrant women and children, some of our society’s most disadvantaged groups, was really intriguing [to me]. Many societal dynamics were at play, some taking pretty unprecedented turns. I really wanted to explore those areas.”
For Lee, who has read several Negley-winning papers from previous years, receiving the award was a special moment. “Those papers really inspired me while I was writing,” Lee said. “I still remember some of them. The thought that maybe someday another student will read my paper and feel moved by this amazing story that I was hopefully able to bring to life is just a special feeling. I feel really fortunate.”
Jordan described the 333 paper as “one of the best thing that this school offers students,” he said. “When you get so engrossed in the thing that you’re studying, that you forget about time, you forget about your little worries and you get absorbed in the project—to me that’s the gold standard of education.”
Lee agreed with Jordan’s sentiments and recalled late nights spent researching her topic. “Definitely cherish those moments. By the time you’re done, what the 333’s given you is more than just a 20-page paper in high school,” Lee said. “By the time I handed in my 333, I’d fallen in love with history and research. It’s definitely one of the most memorable things I’ll have done at Exeter by the time I graduate.”