The 2026 Young Historians Conference

The 2026 Young Historians Conference

Thursday, April 30th Smith Memorial Student Union

Schedule:

8:00                   DOORS OPEN - Smith Memorial Student Union, SMSU 355 (Ballroom)

8:30 - 9:10        INTRODUCTION: Dr. Katrine Barber, Professor and Chair, Department of History

                           SPEAKER: Dr. Catherine McNeur – Storytelling & Parks    

                           PDXScholar Recap Julia Stone, MLIS, Open Scholarship Librarian, PSU Library   

9:10 – 10:20      FIRST SESSIONS: Choose from Three

    SMSU 338    Holy Smoke and Mirrors: Religious Authority and Faith   Moderator: Dr. John Ott

• Morgan Henderson (Saint Mary’s Academy) Heavenly Righteousness: How Religion Facilitated the Rise of The Order of The Knights Templar
• James Hennessey-O’Connor (Grant High School) Catholic Syncretism: A Framework for Understanding Post-Colonial Religious Identity
• India Black-Mitchell (Saint Mary’s Academy) The Revolutionaries of Mt. Tabor: Religion, Radicalism, and Propaganda of The Taborites in Hussite Bohemia

    SMSU 328/9   Mythic Waves: Seas of Change   Moderator: Dr. Loren Spielman

• Lily Manne (Saint Mary’s Academy) A Battle of Will and Wisdom: Polar Opposites in the Polar Extremes of the Viking World
• Leif Crockett (Riverdale High School) The Kraken Wakes: Myth, Science, and the Rise of a Maritime Sensation, from 1750-1900
• Lily Nelson (Grant High School) Demonizing Sexuality: Dangerous Women in Folklore

    SMSU 327    Revolution and Resistance: Pushing Back on Power   Moderator: Dr. Melissa Thomsen

• Holland Burd (Saint Mary’s Academy) Revolutionary Resistance in Denmark: The Impact of Grundtvigism on the Danish Resistance to Nazi Occupation
• Eloise Brentano (Grant High School) Integration as Resistance: How Palestinian Chileans Have Acted as Transnational Activists from 1870-2008
• Glory Bangs (Saint Mary’s Academy) The Sliding Scales of Solidarity: How Shared Colonial Elements Have Created Solidarity Amongst the Irish and Palestinians, Despite a Lasting Racial and Religious Divide

10:20 – 10:30      BREAK

10:30 – 11:40      SECOND SESSIONS: Choose from Three

    SMSU 338    This is my Place   Moderator: Dr. Brenda Frink

• Quinby Maruna (Saint Mary’s Academy) Unapologetic Anger: How Female Punk Musicians Redefined Feminism in 1970s Britain
• Sy Jones (Riverdale High School) Subversive Shooting: How Annie Oakley Rose to Nationwide Notoriety
• Kate McFarland (Grant High School) From Mogadishu to Minneapolis: Transnational Political and Social Ties in the Somali Diaspora

    SMSU 328/9    Crafting the Truth: Reconsidering the Stories We are Told   Moderator: Dr. Brian Turner

• Zuzana Langer (Saint Mary’s Academy) The Prominent Voice of Cold War Era Radio: The 1968 Soviet Union Invasion of Czechoslovakia
• Eben Cole (Grant High School) Rhetoric, Shakespeare, and Tony Soprano: The Influence of Suetonius’s The Life of Julius Caesar in Personalizing the Leader
• Marlo Dabareiner (Saint Mary’s Academy) Division for Profit: ‘The Ripper’ Created by the London Press

    SMSU 327    Truth Illuminated: Medicine, Technology, and the State   Moderator: Dr. Natan Meir 

• Alisa Safina (Saint Mary’s Academy) Chernobyl: How the Government's Response Impacted Health
• Lucy Herzig (Saint Mary’s Academy) The Great Plague of Marseille
• Elias Henkle (Grant High School) Artificial Light: A Conduit of Human Productivity Through the Ages

11:40 – 12:35    LUNCH - SMSU 355 (Ballroom)

12:35 – 1:45      THIRD SESSIONS: Choose from Three

    SMSU 338    Right on the Money: Transnational Capitalism   Moderator: Dr. Joseph Bohling

• Solène Curren (Saint Mary’s Academy) Imported Hierarchies: Early European Colonial Feudal Land Regulation, Patroons, and Oppressive Systems of the Dutch Colonial Management
• Tess Nestel (Grant High School) Little Africa in Global China: Transnational Nigerians in Guangzhou and the Making of Xiaobei
• Charlotte Osenar (Saint Mary’s Academy) From Silver to Smoke: Britain’s Economic War on Qing China

     SMSU 328/9  The Role of Aesthetics in Rebellion   Moderator: Dr. Jennifer Kerns

• Portia Trabue (Saint Mary’s Academy) Practicing Vice: Successful Homosexuality Within the Frameworks of the Medieval Church
• Camille Friess (Saint Mary’s Academy) “A Deliberate Sense of Propaganda:" The Enduring Activism of Picasso’s Guernica
• Stella Gatziolis (Riverdale High School) Golden Age or Gilded Cage? The Rise and Dissolution of the Olympic Art Competitions, 1912–1948

    SMSU 327    Building and G(u)ilding: Creating Communities   Moderator: Dr. Richard Beyler 

• Isabel Fogel (Saint Mary’s Academy) “To Live and Die with Each Other Like Brothers”: Guilds and the Growth of Urban Community in the Medieval and Early Modern Low Countries
• Elinor Stoll (Grant High School) Blueprints of City Planning: How Function and Symbolism Have Shaped our Cities
• Caspian Green (Grant High School) Nation-Building on Pillars of Fascism: How Italian Fascist Ideals Have Remained Alive in Eritrean Identity Through the Asmaran Urban Landscape

1:45 – 2:15       AWARDS CEREMONY - SMSU 355 (Ballroom) 

           Dr. Jennifer Kerns, Department of History

           Dr. Katrine Barber, Chair, Department of History

           Joy Beckett, Challenge Program Director

2026 Young Historians Conference Schedule (PDF)

The conference brings together PSU’s history department and area high schools that participate in college level history classes, such as the PSU Challenge Program, other dual credit programs, or AP history. Courses include, but are not limited to, American History, Western Civilization, and World History. Courses must include a major assignment that is a history research paper. History instructors select the best of these for the student authors to submit for consideration. A history department lead faculty member works with a jury of history graduate students to assess the submissions and choose up to 30 papers for the presentation. 

The conference is organized into concurrent sessions by themes determined by the Jury and lead faculty member. Each session has at least three presenters who have approximately 15 minutes to present their paper. The audience is made up of their classmates and a faculty moderator from the history department. At the end of the presentations, the faculty moderator leads a discussion.

Awards are given for the best papers. Authors of the top papers will be invited to submit their work to PDXScholar, PSU's online repository of scholarly works. To view information about PDXScholar's readership information and number of downloads, click here.

Guidelines for submissions:

• Papers are due by noon on Wednesday, April 1st.
• Paper format should be a google word doc with editing enabled for saholl2@pdx.edu. If students don't have a google account they can send it as a Word Document
• All submissions must include the research paper, abstract, and title page emailed to saholl2@pdx.edu as one document.
• Every paper should contain the student's name, paper title, high school, and history course on the first page of document