When Noah Jenrich (’24) started at Westminster, he knew he wanted to study history and loved his vinyl collection. What he didn’t anticipate was how the two worlds would collide, allowing him to feed his interests with academic justification.
Noah started learning about the youth revolution in the USSR and realized how young people would create bootlegged copies of the Beatles' music, recording songs off the radio.
“I figured out people have a lot of bootleg stuff from other countries; what's the story behind that?” he thought. Following his curiosity, he eventually argued that musical influence was pivotal in the fall of the USSR, thanks to the youth's interest in the Western world. “The whole argument I tried to prove is young people got together and said, ‘We don't want this government anymore. Let's change it.’”
While Professor Jeff Nichols guided Noah through the research process, Noah realized how following his interests—the Beatles, history, and bootlegged copies of music—could make for a unique take on an interesting time in history. He said, “When I started the thesis, it was just pop music, but then I saw a chance to talk about the Beatles. Let's do that. Why not?”
