Please join us in celebrating the many recent achievements of UConn graduate students.
New Positions
Kate Aguilar (PhD 2021) defended her dissertation, “In the Eyes of the Hurricanes: Miami Football, Race, and American Conservatism.” She began as Assistant Professor of African American History at Gustavus Adolphus College in Minnesota in Fall 2021.
Hilary Bogert-Winkler (PhD 2019) appointed Assistant Professor of Liturgy at the School of Theology, University of the South, Sewanee, TN in Fall 2021.
Nathan Braccio (PhD 2020) defended his dissertation, “Parallel Landscapes: Algonquian and English Spatial Understandings of New England, 1500-1700.” He started as Postdoctoral Fellow in Environmental History at Utah State University – Uintah Basin in Fall 2021.
Danielle Dumaine (PhD 2020) completed her dissertation, “Selling Herself: Diane di Prima, Desire, and Commodity in the Postwar United States.” She has been Visiting Assistant Professor, University of North Texas since Fall 2020.
Kevin Finefrock (PhD 2021) defended his dissertation, “The Long Emancipation: Navigating Slavery’s End in Connecticut, 1780-1830.” He is Associate Director of Employer Engagement and Operations, Connecticut College.
Edward Guimont (PhD 2019) started as Professor of Global History at Bristol Community College, Fall Rivers, MA in Fall 2021.
Aimee Loiselle (PhD 2019) began a position as Assistant Professor of History at Central Connecticut State University in Fall 2021.
Winifred Maloney (MA 2018) has started a new position as Associate Dean of College Counseling at Choate Rosemary Hall.
Lauren Stauffer (PhD 2021) completed her dissertation “Beyond the North Atlantic: How NATO Developed an ‘Out-of-Area’ Perspective, 1979-1991″ and began work in a position with the US government.
Megan Streit (PhD candidate) began work this fall as Deputy Director of Operations for Capstone, Keystone, and Pinnacle Courses, National Defense University, Washington DC.
Jessica Strom (PhD 2021) completed her dissertation “Financing Revolution: Adriano Lemmi and the Struggle for Italian Unification“ and continues to teach courses at the UConn Stamford campus.
Prizes, Fellowships, and Internships
Katie Angelica (PhD candidate) received a 2019 grant from the New England Regional Fellowship Consortium, a 2020 Short-Term Grant from the New York Public Library, a 2021 Andrew Mellon Grant from the Massachusetts Historical Society, and a 2021 Grant from the Connecticut League of Women Voters — and she has finally been able to starting putting all of them to use in an intense stretch of dissertation research this fall as archives and libraries reopen.
Alex Beckstrand (PhD candidate) was the sole winner of the 2021 Rear Admiral Samuel Eliot Morison Naval History Scholarship, an award of $5,000 given by the Naval History and Heritage Command to an active duty commissioned officer in the US Navy or Marine Corps studying the lessons of naval history for the analysis of great power competition. He also had his article on Woodrow Wilson and civil-military relations during the 1916 military expedition into Mexico accepted by the Journal of Military History.
Nicole Breault (PhD candidate) was Robert Middlekauff Fellow at the Huntington Library for two months in 2020-2021, as well as Draper Dissertation Fellow at the University of Connecticut Humanities Institute. She was co-winner of the inaugural Sandra Rux Prize. For 2021-22, she is the David Center for the American Revolution Pre-Doctoral Fellow at the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia.
Orlando Deavila Pertuz (PhD 2019) won Honorable Mention for the 2019 Michael Katz Award for Best Dissertation in Urban History. He is now Assistant Professor at the Instituto de Estudio del Caribe, Universidad de Cartagena, Colombia.
Erick Freeman (PhD candidate) is a Dissertation Fellow at the University of Connecticut Humanities Institute, 2021-22.
Constance Holden (PhD candidate) was an intern with the National Endowment for the Humanities in Summer 2021. She also won the Brian Bertoti Award for Outstanding Historical Scholarship for her paper, “Black Visibility and Whitened Modernity: Constructing Argentine Nationalism in Caras y Caretas, 1898-1910”, presented at Virginia Tech’s Innovative Perspectives in History Graduate Research Conference.
Aimee Loiselle (PhD 2019), won the 2020 Catherine Prelinger Award from the Coordinating Council for Women in History & 2020 Lerner-Scott Prize in Women’s History from the Organization of American Historians.
Frances Martin (PhD candidate) received a 2021 Samuel Flagg Bemis Dissertation Research Grant from the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations.
Britney Murphy (PhD candidate) was 2021 National Predoctoral Fellow for Humanities Without Walls.
Amy Sopcak-Joseph (PhD 2019), won the 2020 Zuckerman Dissertation Prize in American Studies from the McNeil Center for Early American History at the University of Pennsylvania.
Megan Streit (PhD candidate) received a 2020-21 Boren Fellowship, a 2020 Samuel Flagg Bemis Dissertation Research Grant from the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations, and a 2021 Critical Language Scholarship to study Azerbaijani.