Abigail Arient Email & Phone Number

Abigail Arient is a co-winner of this year’s Colonel John Taylor Rhett History Manuscript Award for best History senior thesis and Outstanding Senior in both Health Science and History. She is a double major in History and Health Science, and a member of Phi Eta Sigma (National Honor Society), Alpha Epsilon Delta (Health Pre-Professional Honor Society), and Phi Alpha Theta (History Honor Society). In addition, she earned a place at the National Council for Undergraduate Research National Conference in 2021 and 2022, and played trombone in the University Concert Band, Hatter Band, and Pep Band. Abigail’s senior thesis, “Ritual Dance in the Caribbean: From Suppression to the Stage,” received research funding through both a 2021 Stetson Undergraduate Research Experience Grant and a 2021 History Department Evans Johnson Research Grant. Her thesis focused on the period of simultaneous suppression and encouragement that both Santeria dance in Cuba and Vodou dance in Haiti faced prior to the legalization of each through means of tourism. Through the periodization of each religion in their home country, this highlights the similarities and differences in the historical experience of each. Abigail has always been interested in physical or occupational therapy and during her gap year, she plans to explore opportunities to pursue a career in these fields. Additionally, she continues to work as a pharmacy technician, a job she picked up as an essential worker throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. Professors have been impressed by her research and writing, “how she can analyze lots of moving parts to form them into an innovative, cohesive and sophisticated argument.”