Opportunities for Students

Naomi Hanson, class of 2019, was a Summer Scholar in 2016 and in 2017 was named a Dana Intern, working with Dr. Vivian Bruce Conger both times. Naomi's research on female pirates, conducted over several years, was the basis for her History Honors project. She has disseminated her research at a wide variety of venues, including her at Ithaca College at the Whalen Symposium, at the Phi Alpha Theta Western Regional Conference, at National Conference for Undergraduate Research in Memphis, in Hawaii for an international conference, and ComicCon in San Diego.

Being a History major at Ithaca college has helped me greatly with my writing, research, and communications skills. The internships I completed in the summer of 2017 and 2018 were more closely related to my minor, which was communications. I interned for two record companies, Crush Music and Red Light Management. Even though my internships did not directly pertain to history I was still able to receive credit for the internships. The skills I developed over the years as a history major really made a difference in my work. I have always had a great passion for history. When I was a young boy I would stay up late on Wikipedia looking a statistics of different battles fought throughout time and watched movies about historical events. When it was time for me to go to college I knew if I became a history major it would be something I truly enjoyed studying. I met some of the most amazing professor at Ithaca through the history department and took the most amazing classes that Ithaca had to offer. The history program at Ithaca college made me a great writer, taught me how to read critically, and showed me how to properly research. I now work for ViacomCBS in New York City and I was able to obtain this job because of my internships and the skills I learned as a history major.

"I spent the Spring 2017 semester in Rome, Italy and came back with many fresh perspectives. I took classes in history, art history, Italian, and contemporary politics, but my experiences outside the classroom were what really distinguished this time for me. As a history student, coming to understand Italians' particular relationship with public history was very informative — the physical remnants of their nation's fascist past are very visible in Rome today, in stark contrast to many other European nations' attitudes towards the darker periods of their histories. My course of study was flexible enough to allow me to travel extensively within Italy and France, as well as to the United Kingdom, Belgium, Switzerland, and Poland. While abroad I got to experience much that would have been impossible in Ithaca — from anti-Russian political rallies in Warsaw, to skiing across national borders in the Alps, to meeting with members of the Italian Parliament to discuss immigration policy. Spending time away from the States helps put our most mundane cultural practices in perspective, and I highly recommend it."