Recent Ph.D. Recipients (1996 to Present)

This page is intended to give a sense of the range and focus of recent Ph.D. student research in our department, and of the positions that Ph.D.s from our department have found. Current dissertation titles for Ph.D. students are provisional. You may write to current students care of the Department of History, Herter Hall, University of Massachusetts, 161 Presidents Drive, Amherst, MA 01003-9312.

On this page: Current Ph.D. Students | Current M.A. Students | Recent Ph.D. Recipients | Current Public History Students

See also books by history department alumni.

Aimee Newell: "A Stitch in Time: Needlework and Feminine Aging in Antebellum America" (2009)

Jordan Reed: "American Jacobins: Revolutionary Radicalism in the Civil War Era" (2009)

Babette Faehmel: "Beyond the Bell Jar: Sexuality and Identity of College Women, 1940-1965." (2009)

Jill Mudgett: "The Hills of Home: Environmental Identity in the Rural North, 1820-1860." (2008)

Jill Ogline: "A Mission To a Mad County: Black Determination, White Resistance, and Educational Crisis in Prince Edward County, 1959-1965" (2007). Currently Associate Director, C. V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience, Washington College, Md.

Dinah Mayo-Bobee: "‘Something Energetic and Spirited’: Massachusetts Federalists, Rational Politics, and Political Economy in the Age of Jefferson, 1805-1815" (2007). Currently Lecturer in History, University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Thomas Rushford: "Burnings and Blessings: The Cultural Reality of the Supernatural across Early Modern European Spaces." (2007). Currently Western Civilization Post-doctoral Fellow, George Mason University.

Heather Murray: "Not in This Family: Gays and the Family of Origin in North America, 1945-90" (2006). Currently Assistant Professor of History, University of Ottawa.

Julia Sandy-Bailey: "The 'Negro Market' and the Black Freedom Movement in New York City, 1930-1965" (2006). Currently Internship Coordinator, College of Humanities and Fine Arts, University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Christoph Strobel: "Contested Grounds:  Ideologies of Accommodation and Separation and the Colonial Transformation of Ohio and the Eastern Cape, 1760s-1860s." (2004). Currently Assistant Professor of History, University of Massachusetts Lowell.

Thomas Conroy: "Before 'Bulfinch's Boston': Building, Builders, and the Politics of Style, 1750-1800." (2004). Currently Director of Programs, Worcester Historical Museum (Massachusetts).

Wan-li Hu: "Mao's American Strategy and the Korean War." (2004). Currently Director, China Program Center, University of Massachusetts Boston.

Kristin Harper: "Reforming the Familia Tabasqueña:  Gender and State Formation in Revolutionary Tabasco" (2004). Currently Assistant Professor of History, Morehouse College.

Germaine Etienne: "Morality and the 'Middle Class': Antebellum Free Blacks in the Age of Reform" (2004). Currently Assistant Professor of History, Southern Illinois University.

Martha Yoder: "Violation and Immunity: The Body and the Body Politic in Revolutionary America." (2004). Currently Lecturer, Commonwealth College, University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Kevin S. Reilly: "Corporate Stories: Fortune Magazine and the Making of a Modern Managerial Culture." (2004)

Julie Gallagher: Women of Action, In Action: The New Politics of Black Women in New York City, 1944-1972" (2003). Currently Assistant Professor of History, Antioch College, Yellow Springs, OH.

Rick Goulet: "Trade and Conversion: Indians, Spaniards and Franciscans on the Upper Amazon Frontier, 1693-1792" (2003). Currently Associate Professor of History, Department of History, Economics, and Political Science, Lock Haven University, PA.

David Hamblin: "A Social History of Protestantism in Colombia, 1930-2000" (2003).

Robert Surbrug: "Thinking Globally: Political Movements on the Left in Massachusetts, 1974-90." (2003). Currently Instructor in History, Bay Path College, Longmeadow, MA.

Timothy Willig: "Restoring the Thin Red Line:  British Policy and the Indians of the Great Lakes, 1783-1812" (2003). Currently Assistant Professor of History and coordinator of the Native American Studies Program, Onondaga Community College, Syracuse, NY.

Barbara Fox: "Rejuvenating France: The Creation of a National Youth Culture After The Great War" (2002). Currently Assistant Professor of History, Suffolk County Community College, Long Island, NY.

Richard Gassan: "The Birth of American Tourism: New York, the Hudson Valley, and American Culture, 1790-1835" (2002). Currently Assistant Professor of History, American University of Sharjah, United Arab Emirates.

Maria G. Abarca: "'Discontented But Not Inevitably Reactionary': Organized Labor in the Nixon Years" (2001). Currently Program Officer & Advisor, U.S. Fulbright Commission.

John Lund: "Fear of an Oath: Piety, Hypocrisy, and The Dilemma of Puritan Identity" (2001). Currently adjunct faculty, History Department, Keene State College, NH.

Kazuteru Omori: "The Burden of Blackness: Quest for 'Equality' Among Black 'Elites' in Late 19th-Century Boston" (2001). Currently Associate Professor of Comparative Culture, Tsuru University, Yamanashi, Japan.

Glendyne R. Wergland: "Women, Men, Property, and Inheritance: Gendered Testamentary Customs in Western Massachusetts, 1800-1860: or, Diligent Wives, Dutiful Daughters, Prodigal Sons, Westward Migration, Reciprocity, and Rewards for Virtue, Considered" (2001). Currently an independent scholar.

Harold A. Goldman: "'He Had No Right': Sex, Law, and the Courts in Vermont, 1777-1920" (2000). Currently an attorney in Burlington, Vermont.

Else K. Hambleton: "'The World Fill'd with a Generation of Bastards': Pregnant Brides and Unwed Mothers in Seventeenth-Century Massachusetts" (2000).

Ann F. Jefferson: "The Rebellion of Mita, Eastern Guatemala, in 1837" (2000). Currently Lecturer in History, University of Tennessee at Knoxville.

Marian B. Mollin: "Actions Louder Than Words: Gender and Political Activism in the American Radical Pacifist Movement, 1942-1972" (2000). Currently Associate Professor and Associate Chair of the History Department, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University.

Graham Warder: "Selling Sobriety: How Temperance Reshaped Culture in Antebellum America" (2000). Currently Lecturer in History, Keene State College, NH.

Brett A. Berliner: "The 'Exotic' Black African in the French Social Imagination in the 1920s" (1999). Currently Associate Professor of History and Geography, Morgan State University, Baltimore, MD.

Brad A. Paul: "Rebels of the New South: the Socialist Party in Dixie, 1892-1920" (1999). Currently Founder & Executive Director, National Policy and Advocacy Council on Homelessness (NPACH).

Anne-Marie Taylor: "Young Charles Sumner and the Legacy of the American Enlightenment, 1811-1851" (1999).

Kathleen Banks Nutter: "'The Necessity of Organization': Mary Kenney O'Sullivan, The American Federation of Labor, and the Boston Women's Trade Union League, 1892-1919" (1998). Currently Lecturer in History, Stony Brook University.

Julianne O'Brien: "Secret Culture, Public Culture and a Secular Moral Order: Masonry and Antimasonry in Massachusetts (1826-1832), the Third French Republic (1884-1911), and the Russian Empire (1906-1910)" (1998).

Jane Swotchak Ourand: "Louis the Pious and Judith Augusta: In Defense of Sacral Kingship in the Imperium Christianum of the Early Ninth Century" (1998).

Sibyl Ventress Brownlee: "Out of the Abundance of the Heart: Sarah Ann Parker Remond's Quest for Freedom" (1997). Currently Dean of Student Development, Worcester State College, MA.

Sumita Chatterjee: "Indian Women's Lives and Labor: The Indentureship Experience in Trinidad and Guyana, 1845-1917" (1997).

Matthew H. Crocker: "'The Magic of the Many That Sets the World on Fire': Boston Elites and Urban Political Insurgents During the Early Nineteenth Century" (1997). Currently Associate Professor of History, Keene State College, NH.

Julia L. Foulkes: "Dancing America: Modern Dance and Cultural Nationalism 1925-1950" (1997). Currently a Core Faculty member of The New School, New York City.

Kevin L. Gilbert: "The Ordeal of Edward Greeley Loring: Fugitive Slavery, Judicial Reform, and the Politics of Law in 1850s Massachusetts" (1997).

Mark Voss-Hubbard: "Populism and Public Life: Antipartyism, the State, and the Politics of the 1850s in Connecti Pennsylvania" (1997). Currently Associate Professor of History, Eastern Illinois University, Charleston.

Elise G. Young: "Between Daya and Doctor: A History of the Impact of Modern Nation-State Building on Health East and West of the Jordan River" (1997). Currently Associate Professor of History, Westfield State College, MA.

Kathryn A. Abbott: "A History of Alcohol as Symbol and Substance in Anishinaabe Culture: 1765-1920" (1996). Currently editor at Bedford-St. Martin's Press.

Marilyn S. Blackwell: "Entitled to Relief: Poor Women, Charity, and Medicine, 1900-1920" (1996).

Anne Biller Clark: "My Dear Mrs. Ames: A Study of the Life of Suffragist Cartoonist and Birth Control Reformer Blanche Ames Ames, 1878-1969" (1996).

Judith Larrabee Holmes: "The Politics of Anticommunism in Massachusetts, 1930-1960" (1996). Currently Lecturer in Legal Studies, University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Frances B. Jensen: "The Triangle fire and the Limits of Progressivism" (1996). Currently Associate Professor of History, Elms College, Chicopee, MA.

Margaret A. Lowe: "The Mind/Body Problem: College Women's Attitudes Toward Their Bodies, 1875-1930" (1996). Currently Associate Professor of History, Bridgewater State College, MA.

Thomas M. Moriarty: "The Catholic Lobby: The Periphery Dominated Center, Public Opinion and American Foreign Policy 1932-1962" (1996). Currently Register, Hamden County Probate Court, Springfield, MA.

Susan M. Ouellette: "All Hands are Enjoined To Spin: Textile Production in Seventeenth-Century Massachusetts" (1996). Currently Associate Professor of History, St. Michael's College, Colchester, VT.

Bruce Saxon: "The Problem with Planning: Springfield Hospital and the Development of the U.S. Healthcare System 1890-1980" (1996).

Sharon Leigh Williams: "Another Martyr for Old Ireland" (1996).