Department of History

William Stanton Prize Awarded by Pitt Department of History

Graduating History honors major Halak Mehta has been selected by the History Department of the University of Pittsburgh as the recipient of the William Stanton Prize for the best honors thesis in History written in the 2015-2016 academic year.

The Stanton Prize has been generously established by Pitt alumnus Mr. David Frederick, in honor of his mentor William Ragan Stanton, an esteemed American historian who taught in Pitt’s History department from 1962 until 1994.

Mehta’s thesis, "Kazakhstan's Usable Past: Nazarbayev’s Official Nationalism and the Attempt to Create a Post-Soviet National Political Culture” was advised by DAAD Visting Professor of History Katja Wezel and defended before a committee of History faculty members Mari Webel and James Pickett.