Conor Meehan is a 2020 graduate of Assumption College (now Assumption University) in Worcester, Massachusetts.  He majored in Global Studies with a minor in History.

Conor was not born in the United States (much to the surprise of many); he was adopted from the city of Perm, Russia. Since his adoption a few months after he was born, he resided in the town of Sudbury, Massachusetts. His brother and sister were also adopted from Russia, although from different cities. From an early age, their family raised them with activities that emphasized history, both of the United States and of other countries. Their ventures involved exploration of the Gettysburg battlefield; Ohio’s Serpent Mound; Massachusetts’ Minuteman National Park; the Lackawanna Coal Mine of Pennsylvania; Washington D.C.’s landmarks (including the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial); a few of the Spanish Missions of California; Italian landmarks such as the Colosseum and Circus Maximus; Ancient Mayan ruins of Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula (encompassing such sites as Chichen Itza and Uxmal); and many more.

Perhaps not coincidentally, considering family trips regularly involved history of some sort, Conor was often most interested in courses with a heavy concentration on historic events. These courses immersed him in such topics as the Cold War and the early Islamic world. He also engaged in extracurricular activities such as screenings of documentaries, the Philosophy Club, and multi-college live feeds involving important political figures, notably former United States Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and former United States National Security Advisor Susan Rice.

For one semester, Conor joined Assumption College’s Rome Program.  Activities regularly involved trips to some of Italy’s most noteworthy places, particularly in the context of the Roman Empire and the Renaissance: Pompeii, Florence, Asisi, and more. During breaks from classes, he took trips to other parts of Europe. The first of these he spent in the town of Interlaken, Switzerland, a town named for its location between two Alpine lakes. There, he went to a local nature park which housed some of the animals common in the region, went on a snowshoeing and sledding expedition in a town not far from Interlaken, and went on a guided tour which took a railway in the Jungfraujoch mountain pass. On another tripe, he traversed Hungary and Austria. To start, he traveled to the Hungarian capital Budapest, where he visited such locations as Matthias Church. His next destination was Vienna, Austria, where he embarked on a walking tour, which included one of the residences of composer Amadeus Mozart. Another stop was Salzburg, best known as both the birthplace of Mozart and for filming The Sound of Music.

Conor conducted the research for his current contributions as guest curator for the Slavery Adverts 250 Project when he was enrolled in HIS 400 – Research Methods: Vast Early America in Spring 2020.

Welcome, guest curator Conor Meehan.