Five History Students Present Research

On March 22, five students from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette presented their research at the Louisiana Regional Meeting of Phi Alpha Theta, History Honor Society.

That number included two undergraduate History majors, Ashley Birdsall and Tommy Hyung, who presented on “Cunning Women in Early Modern England” and "America's Kryptonite: The Battle in Southeast Asia Called Vietnam,” respectively.

Graduate students Lindsey DeLaughter, Lauren Ponthie, and Emma Willis also shared their research. DeLaughter presented "'When I'm Walking, Let me Walk and When I'm Talking, Let Me Talk': Fats Domino, Civil Rights, and the Politics of Black Presence During the 1950s and 1960s," a paper written for Dr. Michael Martin’s Louisiana History Through Music class; Ponthie presented “ ’The Truth is, My Lord, I Cannot Work:’ The Imagined World of Mad Madge,” which came from her thesis research with Dr. Rob Hermann; and Willis discussed "The Private Made Public: Women's Home Music and the LaCouture Collection at the Center for Louisiana Studies (CLS),” which came from research done for her graduate research assistantship at CLS.

The Louisiana Regional of Phi Alpha Theta meets in conjunction with the annual meeting of the Louisiana Historical Association and allows students to hone their presentation skills and receive feedback from fellow members of Phi Alpha Theta and, importantly, professional historians from around the country. Besides our students, PAT student presenters came from Southeastern Louisiana University, Louisiana Tech University, Loyola University New Orleans, and Louisiana Christian University.