Mary Caputa

Mary Caputa

History

Mary is a co-winner of this year’s Colonel John Taylor Rhett History Manuscript Award for the best History senior thesis. A double major in History and Social Science who graduated in December 2022, she also won a SURE Grant and a History Department Evans Johnson Research Grant, and was a member of the Environmental Club and the Asian Pacific American Coalition. Her senior thesis, "War and Occupation: Revisiting the American Military’s Relationship with Japan, 1941-1952," problematized the U.S. military’s relationship with Japan from the Pacific War in 1941 up to the conclusion of the American Occupation of Japan in 1952. She examined crimes committed by American military personnel, thus addressing a lacuna in the scholarship on World War II, which has remained Western-centric in focusing on Europe and Nazi atrocities, with Japanese war crimes being under-studied and American war crimes even more so. Her thesis aimed to contribute to a more balanced, more nuanced interpretation of the relationship between the U.S. and Japan, being supported by brilliant analysis and an impressive array of primary and secondary sources, including documents from Columbia University’s oral history collection, the Library of Congress’s Alfred Rodman Hussey papers, and records from the U.S. National Archives. Professors have praised Mary for being "a creative thinker and ambitious intellect," as "an exceptional researcher," for possessing "a sophisticated awareness of change over time and the need for evidentiary rigor," and as a student who was "adept at negotiating historiography and applying interdisciplinary methods."

Academic organizations: Phi Alpha Theta (the national History honor society) 

 Post-graduation plans: Admitted to Master of Science in Justice, Law, and Criminology Program at American University. Thereafter, work for the Department of Justice as a criminal investigator before eventually joining the FBI.