It has been a successful week for history students, as AT United States History students advanced to represent Illinois at National History Day, and senior John Freeman earned a prize for a research paper published last fall.

Virtual events around National History Day will be held June 14-20. 

John, a self-proclaimed high school history nerd, received the Ralph Waldo Emerson Prize for an essay published in the Fall 2019 issue of The Concord Review. John received the award for “Crypto Judaism throughout the Inquisitions in Spain, Portugal, and Mexico,” a paper he wrote his junior year in AT U.S. History.

It comes with a $1,000 award.

“It’s the kind of thing where I ran screaming and telling my parents,” John said. “It’s just a really big deal because it’s like the best thing that you can do as a high school history nerd.” 

The Emerson Prize is awarded to the best essays of each quarterly volume of The Concord Review, the only quarterly publisher of high school history papers in the world.

John’s essay can be ordered online and is in the Pritzker-Traubert Library.

“I thought it was so interesting to kind of follow the path of how these people moved and how they adapted to what situations that they were given. I just thought that was really, really interesting,” John said. 

John also did an independent study with Susan Shapiro on the origins of anti-Semitism and because of that, was interested to learn how that evolved into the Spanish Inquisition.

Three student groups received the gold medal at the Illinois State Competition for presenting the best project in their category. They will represent Illinois at National History Day.

Performance: Noor Assad, Jaden Li, Ramsey Radwan, Omar Siddiqui and Freddy Tang 

Documentary: Caledonia Abbey, Peyton Holleb, Orla Molloy and Caroline Taylor

Website Group: Emily Chan, Eva DeCastro, Meghan Flannigan, Sanaa Imami and Rama Kakkera

These students took top honors at the Metro and Regional competitions of Illinois History Day, and received Blue Ribbons at IHD.

Papers: Alexandra Nehme, Anna Rzhetsky, Rachel Scruby

Group Performance: Noor Assad, Jaden Li, Ramsey Radwan, Omar Siddiqui, Freddy Tang   

Group Documentary: Caledonia Abbey, Peyton Holleb, Orla Molloy and Caroline Taylor; Josh Ravichandran, Sara Thomas, Eva Platz-Walker and Max Polite; Rohn Hoffmeister, Grace Holleb, Ben Meyer and Iris Xie

Solo Documentary: Julia Anitescu

Group Exhibit: Charlie Brennan and Niyati Rana; Elizabeth Park, Rohan Shah and Kara Xu

Solo Exhibit: Sawyer Anderson, Eliza Doss, Meghan Hammond

Group Website: Emily Chan, Eva DeCastro, Meghan Flannigan, Sanaa Imami and Rama Kakkera; Adi Badlani, Jayne Crouthamel, Tierney Cunningham and Carly McClear

Solo Website: Hunter Heyman