Levine Outstanding M.A. Thesis Award

John Hanebuth 

John Hanebuth is originally from Northern Virginia. After earning his undergraduate degree in history from the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts, he spent three years teaching high school in Chuuk, one of the four states which constitute the Federated States of Micronesia. While there, he developed a personal attachment to Chuuk. Since returning to the United States, he has explored the relationship of the United States to the Pacific Basin. Upon completion of his thesis, John earned his Master of Arts in History from George Mason University in 2019. Currently, John is working with the Close Up Foundation in Washington D.C. and has plans to pursue a PhD in history at a later date. 

John Hanebuth is awarded the Larry Levine award for his MA thesis, “’A Fiend About Women’: Gender Dynamics and American Evangelism in a Micronesian Mission During the High Tide of Pacific Imperialism, 1884-1899,” which he wrote under the direction of Professor Carton, with Professor Mullen and Professor Lebovic also on the thesis committee.

A copy of the thesis can be found online at http://mars.gmu.edu/handle/1920/11669

Professor Carton writes: “Hanebuth's thesis research explores the neglected history of US missionary influence in the Pacific region, particularly Micronesia, during a time of Western territorial expansion at the end of the nineteenth century. Consulting archival sources in Massachusetts (i.e., the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions Collection in Houghton Library, Harvard University, and church papers in the Congregationalist Library, Boston), his scholarship shows how itinerant evangelists and their converts played an important role in spreading American evangelical and imperial influence abroad.”