Hastings College senior Elizabeth Miller garnered the top undergraduate paper award at the 2024 Northern Great Plains History Conference, which was held in Sioux Falls, S. Dak.
Several other HC individuals or who have ties to Hastings College also attended the conference. The conference provided an opportunity for HC historians at any career stage to share award-winning scholarship and learn from others.
Miller, from Arlington, Kan., presented her original research in the paper “There Will Probably Be No Bloodbath in Turkey: How Differences in Secularism and Nationalism Prevented US Intelligence from Predicting the 1960 Coup in Turkey.” The Outstanding Undergraduate Paper came with a $200 prize. The judges especially praised her meticulous interpretation of numerous primary sources in the paper.
Miller spent the summer of 2023 studying Turkish in Ankara, Turkey, after earning a Critical Language Scholarship (CLS) from the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs.
Others who presented at the conference included Emma Morelli, a junior from Thorton, Colo. Her research was on the little-known Billy Graham musical western, “Mr. Texas.” Her paper, “A Wonderful Ride: Billy Graham’s Utilization of Western Musical Cinema in 1950s America,” argued that the film showed Graham’s effort to evangelize new audiences through new media of the mid-20th century, an effort that paved the way for the contemporary Christian entertainment industry.
HC history professor, Dr. Rob Babcock, presented findings from his months in Latvia during his recent sabbatical. His research was focused on food and ideology in the former Soviet Republic. His paper, “The Menus of Jurmala: What Can They Tell Us?” underscored changes and continuity in restaurant dining in the resort city of Jurmala.
HC alum, Olivia Perez (2022), presented a paper, “Championing a Nation and People: The Lithuanian Riflemen’s Association, Ethno-Nationalism, and the Meaning of Sport in Lithuania, 1920-1940.” Perez’s paper examined the uses of sport and sports imagery by paramilitaries to define Lithuanian national identity. Perez recently completed her masters in history from Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville and has been accepted for a funded PhD program at Rutgers University.
Dr. Wayne Riggs, the Hastings College’s Vice President of Academic Affairs, also attended the conference and chaired a panel.
This is the 58th year of the Northern Great Plains History Conference, which features historians, undergraduate and graduate history students, and both independent and affiliated scholars who live and work in the Northern Great Plains.