Grants and Awards
In its effort to promote the study of military history, the Center for Military, War, and Society Studies sponsors several grants for graduate students to conduct research in military archives and to attend the annual meeting of the Society for Military History.
Past Recipients
2023 RECIPIENTs OF THE SMH Registration Grant
Bonnie Cherry
"“Little Kingdoms’ : Extraordinary Land Use and WRA Internment Camps in Indian Country"
Nathan Ledbetter
"Praise the Kami and Pass the Ammunition: Integrating the Old and New on the Sixteenth-Century Japanese Battlefield"
Patrick Mansujeto
“The Legacy Ships of the Philippine Navy, Strategic Lesson and Memorialization”
Alex Nelepovitz
"Becoming American Without Agency: Mexican-Americans and the Great War”
Ariel Wilks
“‘We are Texans’: The Texas Navy’s Quest for Identity and Legitimacy, 1836-1845”
2022 RECIPIENT OF THE PUBLIC Military HISTORY AWARD
Abigail Scott
PhD STUDENT, HISTORY DEPARTMENT, UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS
“Message from a Drum” will address the story of the University of Kansas and its Native student population in the 1900s. This project will combine multiple public-facing aspects, such as collecting oral histories and mapping data on the Native student population. Specifically, it will ask: How do Native students navigate their identities as veterans and university students?
Through data mapping, this project will show the transnational nature of KU to dispel the popular understanding of Kansas as "flyover country," and instead show that it is as an integral part of America and the world.
2022 RECIPIENTs OF THE SMH Registration Grant
Yi-nou Chang
"Anti-tank Warfare and the Military Adaptation of Chinese People's Volunteer Army in the Korean War"
Noah Crawford
"'What Shall Be Done With Them?': The American Civil War Refugee Crisis and Its Relevance for the Military Historian"
Tristan Krause
“‘Graves of Soldiers in Every Village’: The U.S. Army and the Search for Missing Americans in Occupied Germany, 1945-50”
Andrea Miles
"Black Rebels: African American Revolutionaries From North Carolina During and After the War of Independence: Chapter Two 'Counties and Class'"
Jorden Pitt
"Fear of Flying in the Korean War: Manhood and Mental Illness in the United States Air Force"
2021 RECIPIENT OF THE PUBLIC Military HISTORY AWARD
Clark Terrill
PhD STUDENT, HISTORY DEPARTMENT
On Thursday, May 11, 1972, police arrested twenty-seven marchers protesting the Vietnam War. Far from an isolated incident, the protest reflected a sustained, broad-based opposition to the war which had occasionally boiled over into clashes with police. Beginning in 1963, the KU Student Peace Union (KU SPU) spearheaded such actions, including derailing the Chancellor’s review of ROTC cadets, and even the organization’s president splashing his own blood on ROTC fliers. By the late 1960s, a growing proportion of students participated in the anti-war movement through an array of organizations such as Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). In light of the civil unrest of Summer 2020, the history of protest movements, especially those which have provoked use of force by police, is not only relevant but necessary in supporting our understanding of such conflicts. This project will use text and visual elements, such as newspaper clippings and photographs, in a public-facing exhibit illustrating the rich history of political activism at KU and its present-day relevance. The exhibit will spotlight anti-war activism in the Vietnam era, but will also trace a longer history of student pacifism, going back as early as the First World War. Materials relating to the perspectives of the University administration, as well as of ROTC cadets themselves, will supplement the anti-war perspective in order to illustrate the movement’s complexity for undergraduates and visitors.