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. See also books by history department students and alumni.
Ph.D. Recipients
2023
Heather Brinn: "Freedom’s Bonds: Black Women’s Intimate Relationships in the Reconstruction South."
Andrew Grim: "The City Is Ours: Black Political Power and the Struggle against Police Brutality in Postwar Newark." Visiting Assistant Professor of African American History, Williams College
Camesha Scruggs: "'We Poor Negro Women Have to Work:' African American Women Domestic Workers in Texas, 1900-1940." Assistant Professor at Central Connecticut State University.
Gina Talley: "From (Un)Known to Known: Biography, Archives, and the Methods of Modern U.S. Women’s History." Assistant Teaching Professor and History Faculty Advisor, Villanova University
Brian Whetstone: "From a Culture of Poverty to a Culture of Property: Preservation and Urban Crisis in the 'City of Homes.'" Princeton Mellow Fellow at Princeton University's Initiative in Architecture, Urbanism, and Humanities.
2022
Adeline Broussan: "Grassroots Diplomacy, Warrior Femininity, and Intersectional Sisterhood during the French and American Wars in Vietnam (1945-1975)." Researcher and counselor on gender-based and sexual violence at La Petite in Toulouse France.
Jenna Febrizio: "Social Connections & Memory Dimensions: A Layered Portrait of a Twentieth-Century Art Network." Director of Education and Operations at the Heurich House Museum in Washington, DC.
Brittany Frederick: "The Capstone of My Education: Black Women, Student Power, and the Freedom Struggle in Higher Education." 2022-23 Postdoctoral Scholar, Africana Research Center, Penn State University
Sarah Lavallee: "Reclaiming the Past: The Legacy of National Socialism in Northern Germany." Curatorial Assistant for the Harvard College Observatory Astronomical Photographic Glass Plate Collection.
Charles Weisenberger: "Beyond the South: The Telfair Family, Slavery, and the Antebellum One Percent," Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in Public History, Wesleyan University
2021
Jason Higgins: "Stars, Bars, and Stripes: A History of Veterans in the Criminal Justice System Since the Vietnam War." Digital Scholarship Coordinator for Virginia Tech Publishing/Assistant Professor.
2020
Mohammad Ataie: "Exporting the 1978-79 Revolution: Pan-Islamic or Sectarian." Junior Research Fellow at the Crown Center for Middle East Studies, Brandeis University.
Carl Herzog: "Sailing Illicit Voyages: Colonial Smuggling Operations between North America and the West Indies, 1714-1776." Public Historian at USS Constitution Museum
2019
Erica Fagen: "Hashtag Holocaust: Negotiating Memory in the Age of Social Media." Planning, Programming, and Research Officer at CIUSSS du Centre-Ouest-de-l'Île-de-Montréal.
Christopher Fobare: "A Generational Divide: The Reconstruction of American Party Politics, 1865-1912." Adjunct Faculty at Worcester State University and Springfield College.
Michael Jirik: "Abolition and Academe: Struggles for Freedom and Equality at British and American Colleges, 1702-1855." Assistant Professor of Black Studies, University of Missouri.
Mark Roblee: "'Greetings, I am an Immortal God!': Reading, Imagination, and Personal Divinity in Late Antiquity, 2nd-5th Centuries CE." Lecturer, Commonwealth Honors College, UMass Amherst.
2018
Kate Freedman: “A Tangled Web: Quakers and the Atlantic Slave System, 1625-1770.” Currently Librarian for History and Graduate Student Services at UMass Amherst.
Amanda Goodheart: “’No Seas Can Now Divide Us’: Captains’ Wives, Sister Sailors, and the New Whalefishery, 1840-1870.” Currently Director of Education at the New England Air Museum.
John Higgins: “Literary Culture in Early Christian Ireland: Hiberno-Latin Saints’ Lives as a Source for Seventh Century Irish History.” Visiting Assistant Professor at Trinity College (Fall 2019) and at Amherst College (Spring 2020).
Ann Robinson: “Creating a Symbol of Science: The Development of a Standard Periodic Table of the Elements.” Currently working as an independent historian and as a reference assistant at the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences.
2017
Dan Allosso: Currently Assistant Professor at Bemidji State University. The book Peppermint Kings, based on my dissertation, is forthcoming from the Yale University Press. Open Educational Resources (OER) advocate and author, blogging at OERFuture.net.
Felicia Jamison: "And Liberty For All: Geechee Culture and the Black Freedom Struggle in Liberty County, Georgia, 1752-1946." Assistant Professor History and Comparative Humanities at the University of Louisville.
Kathryn Julian: "The Socialist Devout: Religious Orders and the Making of an East German Catholic Community." Program Officer in the Programs on Ethics, Religion, and the Holocaust in the Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, US Holocaust Memorial Museum.
Amanda Tewes: "Fantasy Frontier: Old West Theme Parks and Memory in California. Currently Historian/Interviewer and Associate Academic Specialist, Oral History Center, The Bancroft Library at the University of California Berkeley.
2016
Julie de Chantal: "'If There Are Men who Are Afraid to Die, There Are Women who Are NOT': African American Women's Civil Right Leadership in Boston, 1920-1975." Currently Assistant Professor in History at Georgia Southern University.
Daniel Chard: “Nixon’s War on Terrorism: The FBI, Leftist Guerrillas, and the Origins of Watergate.” Currently Educator, Department of History, Western Washington College.
Gary Garrison: "Rights in Property and Property in Rights: Privacy, Contract and Ownership of the Body in Anglo-American Political and Constitutional Thought." Deceased.
Sandra Perot: "Theatre Women and Cultural Diplomacy in the Transatlantic Anglophone World: 1752-1807." Sandy Perot is Director, Advanced Humanities Research (AHR) program, Berkshire School.
2015
Jeffrey Kovach: "Nantucket Women: Public Authority and Education in the Eighteenth-Century Nantucket Quaker Women's Meeting and the Foundation for Female Activism." Currently Teaching Faculty, Charter Oak State College.
Seanegan Sculley: "Good Gentlemen and Dirty Nasty People: The Formation of Military Tradition and Leadership in the Continental Army, 1775-1783." Currently Academy Professor, United States Military Academy, West Point.
2014
Richard Taupier: “The Oirad of the Early 17th Century: Statehood and Political Ideology.” Retired; formerly Associate Director for Program Development, Office of Research and Deveopment UMass Amherst.
Laura Miller: “All-American Vacationland: African American, Puerto Rican, and Italian Resorts in the Catskill Mountains, 1920-1980.” Currently Independent Consultant.
Thomas Army: "Engineering Victory: The Ingenuity, Proficiency, and Versatility of Union Citizen Soldiers in Determining the Outcome of the Civil War." Currently Adjunct Professor, Quinnipiac University.
Andrew Dausch: "Discovering Brazil in Twentieth-Century France, 1930-1964: Franco-Brazil Cultural Politics in the Era of Decolonization." Currently Assistant Director of Fellowships and Postgraduate Scholarships at Smith College.
2013
Maria Abunnasr: "The Making of Ras Beirut: A Landscape of Memory for Narratives of Exceptionalism, 1870-1975." Currently Independent scholar, historical consultant, and oral historian in Beirut, Lebanon.
Michella Marino: "Sweating Femininity: Women Athletes, Masculine Culture, and American Inequality from 1930 to the Present." Currently Deputy Director at Indiana Historical Bureau
2012
Beth E. Behn: "Woodrow Wilson’s Conversion Experience: The President and the Federal Woman Suffrage Amendment." Currently Commander, 7th Transportation Brigade (Expeditionary), United States Army.
2011
Carolyn Barske: "The Lover's Instructor": Courtship Advice in Anglo-America, 1640-1830." Currently Interim Director, Muscle Shoals National Heritage Area, University of North Alabama.
Yveline Alexis: "Nationalism & the Politics of Historical Memory: Charlemagne Peralte's Rebellion against U.S. Occupation of Haiti, 1915-1986." Currently Associate Professor of Africana Studies at Oberlin College.
2010
Kathryn Merriam: "The Preservation of Iroquois Thought: J.N.B. Hewitt's Legacy of Scholarship for His People." Faculty NTT at Community College of Vermont.
Margo Shea: "Once Again It Happens:" Collective Remembrance and Irish Identity in Catholic Derry, Northern Ireland 1896-2008." Faculty TT at Salem State University.
Harry Franqui-Rivera: "Fighting for the Nation: Military Service, Popular Political Mobilization and the Creation of Modern Puerto Rican National Identities: 1868-1952." Currently Associate Professor of History at Bloomfield College.
Michael Shapiro: "Becoming Union Square: Struggles For Legitimacy in Nineteenth-Century New York." Account Supervisor at 360i; Co-Founder/Business and Marketing Manager at James Anthony Apparel.
Brian Bixby: "Seeking Shakers: Two Centuries of Visitors to Shaker Villages."
Aimee Newell: "A Stitch in Time: Needlework and Feminine Aging in Antebellum America." Research Program Administrator [Grants Administrator] at Drexel University's College of Arts and Sciences.
2009
Jordan Lewis Reed: "American Jacobins: Revolutionary Radicalism in the Civil War Era." Currently employed at the Office of Naval Intelligence.
Babette Faehmel: "Beyond the Bell Jar: Sexuality and Identity of College Women, 1940-1965." Currently Associate Professor of History, SUNY Schenectady, NY.
2008
Jill Mudgett: "The Hills of Home: Environmental Identity in the Rural North, 1820-1860." Currently an independent scholar.
2007
Jill Ogline Titus: "A Mission To a Mad County: Black Determination, White Resistance, and Educational Crisis in Prince Edward County, 1959-1965." Currently Associate Director of the Civil War Institute.
Dinah Mayo-Bobee: "‘Something Energetic and Spirited’: Massachusetts Federalists, Rational Politics, and Political Economy in the Age of Jefferson, 1805-1815." Currently Associate Professor at East Tennessee State University. She published New England Federalists: Widening the Sectional Divide in Jeffersonian America in 2017 with by Fairleigh DIckinson University Press.
Thomas Rushford: "Burnings and Blessings: The Cultural Reality of the Supernatural across Early Modern European Spaces." Currently at Northern Virginia Community College.
2006
Heather Murray: "Not in This Family: Gays and the Family of Origin in North America, 1945-90." Currently Associate Professor of History, University of Ottawa.
Julia Sandy-Bailey: "The 'Negro Market' and the Black Freedom Movement in New York City, 1930-1965." Currently Associate Professor of History, Shepherd University, Shepherdstown, W. Va.
2004
Christoph Strobel: "Contested Grounds: Ideologies of Accommodation and Separation and the Colonial Transformation of Ohio and the Eastern Cape, 1760s-1860s." Currently Professor of History, University of Massachusetts Lowell.
Thomas Conroy: "Before 'Bulfinch's Boston': Building, Builders, and the Politics of Style, 1750-1800." Chair and Professor of Urban Studies at Worcester State University.
Wan-li Hu: "Mao's American Strategy and the Korean War." Currently Director, China Program Center, University of Massachusetts Boston.
Kristin Harper: "Reforming the Familia Tabasqueña: Gender and State Formation in Revolutionary Tabasco." Currently Educational Advisor at the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation in Lansdowne, VA.
Germaine Etienne: "Morality and the 'Middle Class': Antebellum Free Blacks in the Age of Reform." Formerlly Assistant Professor of History, Southern Illinois University.
Martha Yoder: "Violation and Immunity: The Body and the Body Politic in Revolutionary America." Currently Senior Lecturer, Commonwealth College, University of Massachusetts Amherst.
Kevin S. Reilly: "Corporate Stories: Fortune Magazine and the Making of a Modern Managerial Culture." Currently International Representative at LIUNA, Washington, DC.
2003
Julie Gallagher: "Women of Action, In Action: The New Politics of Black Women in New York City, 1944-1972." Currently Associate Professor of History and Women's Studies, Penn State Brandywine, Brandywine, Pa.
Rick Goulet: "Trade and Conversion: Indians, Spaniards and Franciscans on the Upper Amazon Frontier, 1693-1792." 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."
Robert Surbrug: "Thinking Globally: Political Movements on the Left in Massachusetts, 1974-90." Currently Associate Professor of History, Bay Path College, Longmeadow, MA.
Timothy Willig: "Restoring the Thin Red Line: British Policy and the Indians of the Great Lakes, 1783-1812." Currently Associate Professor of History and Department Chair, Indiana University South Bend.
2002
Barbara Fox: "Rejuvenating France: The Creation of a National Youth Culture After The Great War." Currently Associate 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." Deceased. Formerly Associate Professor of History, American University of Sharjah, United Arab Emirates.
2001
Maria G. Abarca: "'Discontented But Not Inevitably Reactionary': Organized Labor in the Nixon Years." Currently Program Officer & Advisor, U.S. Fulbright Commission.
John Lund: "Fear of an Oath: Piety, Hypocrisy, and The Dilemma of Puritan Identity." 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." 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." Currently an independent scholar.
2000
Harold A. Goldman: "'He Had No Right': Sex, Law, and the Courts in Vermont, 1777-1920." 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." Currently an independent scholar.
Ann F. Jefferson: "The Rebellion of Mita, Eastern Guatemala, in 1837." Retired; formerly 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." Currently Associate Professor of History, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University.
Graham Warder: "Selling Sobriety: How Temperance Reshaped Culture in Antebellum America." Currently Director, Education Materials Development, Disability History Museum.