In honor of the revival of the aptly named Undergraduate Journal of History, a group of history majors will participate in the Herbert Aptheker Undergraduate History Conference this Wednesday.
The event, sponsored by the Undergraduate History Council, will feature several students presenting original research that was published in this semester’s newly launched journal. The three student presenters are Lydia Walker on “The International Law of War as Viewed through the Spatial Order of Carl Schmitt,” David Piendak on “Willfull Forgetting: Methodological Approaches to the Problem of Historical Memory,” and Andrew Tillett-Saks on “Controlling Flint: Inclinations and Obstacles to Workers Control in the 1937 Sit-Down Strike.” Each talk will be followed by a faculty commentary from history professors Anders Stephanson, Elizabeth Blackmar, and Mae Ngai, respectively.
The journal debuted online earlier this semester and will be released in print at the conference with the goal of creating a new forum for exceptional student papers.
“If you write a really good paper that’s really impressive, it seems like there should be some kind of outlet where outstanding undergraduate scholarship can be shared with a wider audience,” said Rudi Batzell, CC ’09 and the journal’s editor. In 2005, the Undergraduate History Council published one issue of a proposed regular journal, but the project died before subsequent issues could be printed. Batzell secured a position on the Undergraduate History Council this semester on a platform of bringing the journal back.
For the first revamped issue, the journal’s nine-person editorial board reviewed around 25 student submissions nominated by Columbia professors. Six articles were selected for publication, although all submissions are displayed on the journal’s Web site. The six authors participated in an extensive editing process before the journal was printed and each received a $150 prize.
For the journal’s next issue in the fall, Batzell said that the editorial board will solicit submissions from several dozen history departments in the United States and Canada, which he predicted could produce 100 submissions or more.