2026 Editor’s Note
By: Britt Henslee
In its forty-third volume, the CU Denver Historical Studies Journal presents student scholarship spanning centuries, continents, and methodologies. This breadth reflects the wide range of curiosity and specialization that the CU Denver History Department works hard to cultivate. The pieces gathered in this volume range in their focus from early modern European history to the twentieth-century American West, and from labor history to social movements, to public health. They stand as a testament to what students produce when they are given the space and support to pursue original research.
Lulu Joanis’s “The Jewish Consumptive Question” follows the twentieth-century rivalry between Denver’s two Jewish sanatoria—the National Jewish Hospital for Consumptives and the Jewish Consumptives’ Relief Society—revealing how intra-Jewish tensions shaped both local public health and the broader development of Zionist thought. Robert Welch’s “This Woman’s Work” challenges the assumption that early modern women were powerless, arguing that Prioress Mechthild von Wild of Kloster Lüne wielded significant influence in sixteenth-century Lüneburg through informal networks and strategic relationships. Adrianna Cubbage offers a historiographical analysis of fairy tale scholarship in “The History of Silence,” arguing that the history profession’s absence from the field forced literary critics and folklorists to become their own historians. Sophia Allred’s “Doomed to Fail,” examines the Denver Tramway Strike of 1920 and demonstrates how The Denver Post shaped public opinion against striking workers by framing the strike as a violation of consumer rights. Sidni Zimmer’s “Thwarting the Odds,” follows the Artists’ Club of Denver as it persevered against Wild West stereotypes, financial obstacles, and the absence of a permanent gallery—and eventually proved central to the founding of the Denver Art Museum. Jed Bethea’s “The Shield That Shattered Itself,” explores how the New Orleans Police Department’s mid-1990s reform efforts—despite gaining momentum under Superintendent Richard Pennington—ultimately failed to transform the department’s culture of corruption and brutality. And lastly, also featured is Alex Ertel’s digital public history project, “Women of the American West,” accompanied by an interview that invites readers into the research process and interpretive decisions that the finished website cannot show on its own.
This volume would not exist without the dedication of its editorial team and the faculty advisor who supported us. For that reason, I would like to thank assistant editors Danyelle Allen, Michael Anglemire, Jed Bethea, Adrianna Cubbage, Nick Davis, Colin Hayward, Lulu Joanis, Peter McGuire, Indira Saha, and faculty advisor Dr. Dale Stahl for your contributions to this journal. To the students whose scholarship fills these pages: thank you for trusting us with your work and for engaging in such a collaborative process with us.
