Phi Alpha Theta, a history honors society, was founded in 1921.  The society’s mission has been to “promote the study of history through the encouragement of research, good teaching, publication and the exchange of learning and ideas among historians.”  In addition it seeks to gather “students, teachers and writers of history together for intellectual and social exchanges, which promote and assist historical research and publication by our members in a variety of ways.”[*]

The Eastern Nazarene College History Department organized its chapter of Phi Alpha Theta in 1997.  In recent years, under the able leadership of Professor Carla Lovett, the ENC chapter has blossomed.  Professor Lovett encouraged several history majors to participate in the society’s spring 2004 annual conference, and this year Lovett advised several others to deliver papers at the meeting.  On 9 April, 2005, Saint Anselm College's History Department hosted the Phi Alpha Theta New England Regional Conference.  Three students capably represented ENC: Heather Warmuth (junior, Plattsburgh, NY), Rachel Jester (junior, Seaford, DE), and Jen Ibanez (senior, Baltimore, MD).  Their well-researched papers ranged widely—from Latino identity and the origins of the American civil rights movement, to modern European political and cultural history. 

Jen Ibanez presented a piece that analyzed the struggle for desegregated schools in California’s Latino community, “Westminster v. Mendez: Before Brown.”  Ibanez posed the question, “To what extent was Westminster v. Mendez a precursor to the Brown v. Board of Education decision (1954)?”  Fittingly, Brown has received much attention since its 50th anniversary.  Yet the Mendez case foreshadowed, Ibanez asserted, later cases in significant ways. Rachel Jester’s presentation, “Jacques Ellul and the Consumption Explosion,” considered French cultural critique Ellul’s assessment of secular consumerism in postwar France.  In light of recent issues surrounding secularism vs. free religious expression in France, Jester’s paper was both relevant and provocative.  Finally, Heather Warmuth spoke on the Soviet poet and author Boris Pasternak, “The Life of Boris Pasternak: A Triumph over Socialist Realism.”  Warmuth argued that Pasternak was not the intellectual socialist ideologue scholars often imagine.  Pasternak achieved relative literary freedom during an era when party officials intensely scrutinized intellectuals.