Recent Ph.D. Degrees Awarded

2024

  • Philip A. Goduti, Jr., “The Durability of a Kennedy”: How Emotional Communities Contributed to John F. Kennedy’s Core Beliefs, 1930-1963″
    Advisor: Frank Costigliola
    Position: Teacher, Somers High School & Part-Time Faculty, Quinnipiac University
  • Alex Beckstrand, “Wilsonian Control: American Civil-Military Relations and Command Relationships, 1913-1921″
    Advisor: Frank Costigliola
    Position: Lecturer, Central Connecticut State University
  • Kathryn Angelica, “An Uneasy Alliance: Cooperation and Conflict in Nineteenth-Century Black and White Women’s Activism”
    Advisor: Manisha Sinha
    Position: Visiting Assistant Professor, Purdue University Fort Wayne
  • Frances Martin, “From the Ambassadors of Little Saigon: The Nation-Making and Grassroots Diplomacy of Vietnamese Refugees in the United States, 1975-1997″
    Advisor: Bradley Simpson
    Position: Archivist and Librarian at Mattatuck Museum, Waterbury, CT
  • Gabrielle Westcott, “Struggling for the Soul and Mind of a President: How Emotions and Personality Shaped Lyndon Johnson’s Vietnam Policy in 1968”
    Advisor: Frank Costigliola

2023

  • Britney Murphy, “Outsiders Within: Volunteers in Service to America and the Boundaries of Citizenship, 1962-1971″
    Advisor: Peter Baldwin
    Position:  Assistant Professor in History and African American Studies, University of Alabama Birmingham
  • Shaine Scarminach, “Lost at Sea: US Foreign Policy and the Law of the Sea Convention, 1967-1982″
    Advisor: Frank Costigliola
    Position:  Visiting Assistant Professor, Northern Arizona University
  • Shihan Zheng, “The Opium Discourse in China, 1830-1910″
    Advisor: Peter Zarrow
    Position: Lecturer, Chinese University of Hong Kong – Shenzen

    2022

    • Luisa Arrieta, “Struggles for Appearance: Afro-descendants and the Visual Technologies of Citizenship in Colombia, 1880-1910″
      Advisor: Mark Healey
      Position: Assistant Professor, Spelman College
    • Nicole Breault, “The Night Watch of Boston: Law and Governance in Eighteenth-Century British America
      Advisor: Cornelia Dayton
      Position: Assistant Professor, University of Texas El Paso
    • Megan Dawson, “Ukraine Undaunted: Negotiating Nuclear Disarmament, Postcolonial Identity, and Geopolitical Reordering in the Post-Soviet Era, 1991-1994
      Advisor: Frank Costigliola
      Position: Russia Strategy Analyst with the Office of Naval Intelligence
    • Erik Freeman, “The Mormon International: Communitarian Socialist Politics and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1830-1890
      Advisor: Christopher Clark
      Position: Assistant Professor,  Snow College (Ephraim, UT)
    • Brittney Yancy, “Free Our Sisters: Women’s Radicalism, Black Power, and the City
      Advisor: Jeffrey Ogbar
      Position: Assistant Professor, Illinois College

    2021

    • Katelyn Aguilar, “In the Eyes of the Hurricanes: Miami Football, Race, and American Conservatism
      Advisor: Micki McElya
      Position: Assistant Professor, Gustavus Adolphus College
    • Kevin Finefrock, “The Long Emancipation: Navigating Slavery’s End in Connecticut, 1780-1830
      Advisor: Cornelia Dayton
      Position: Associate Director of Employer Engagement and Operations, Connecticut College
    • Lauren Stauffer, “Beyond the North Atlantic: How NATO Developed an ‘Out-of-Area’ Perspective, 1979-1991″
      Advisor: Frank Costigliola
      Position: Analyst, United States Government
    • Jessica Strom, “Financing Revolution: Adriano Lemmi and the Struggle for Italian Unification
      Advisor: John Davis
      Position: Assistant Teaching Professor, Honors College, Northern Arizona University

    2020

    • Nathan Braccio, “Parallel Landscapes: Algonquian and English Spatial Understandings of New England, 1500-1700”
      Advisor: Nancy Shoemaker
      Position: Assistant Professor, Clark University
    • Danielle Dumaine, “Selling Herself: Diane di Prima, Desire, and Commodity in the Postwar United States”
      Advisor: Micki McElya
      Position: Lecturer, University of North Texas

    2019

    • Hilary Bogert-Winkler, “Prayerful protest and Clandestine Conformity: Alternative Liturgies and the Book of Common Prayer in Interregnum England”
      Advisor: Brendan Kane
      Position: Assistant Professor of Liturgy, School of Theology, University of the South
    • Orlando Deavila Pertuz, “The Battle for Paradise: Tourism, Development, Race, and Popular Politics in Cartagena (Colombia), 1942-1988”
      Advisor: Mark Healey
      Position: Professor, International Institute of Caribbean Studies, Universidad de Cartagena (Colombia)
    • Casey Green, “‘Never Likely to be his Own Man Again:’ Impairment and Disability in New England, 1690-1820″
      Advisor: Cornelia Dayton
      Position: Associate Lecturer of History, Louisiana School for Math, Science, and the Arts
    • Matt Guariglia, “The American Problem: Race, Empire, and Policing in New York City
      Advisor: Micki McElya
      Position: Policy Analyst, Electronic Frontier Foundation; Visiting Scholar, UC Hastings School of Law (San Francisco, CA)
    • Edward Guimont, “From King Solomon to Ian Smith: Rhodesian Alternate Histories of Zimbabwe” 
      Advisor: Brendan Kane
      Position: Professor of Global History, Bristol Community College (Fall River, MA) 
    • Adam Hill, “The Virtues of Dead Kings: Egyptology and Empire in Twentieth-Century Britain”
      Advisor: Brendan Kane
      Position: Assistant Professor of History and Chair of the Department of History, Greenville University
    • Olga Koulisis, “Prophets of Global Order: How the Morgan Bankers Sold “Cooperation” in an Age of Democratic Conflict, 1890-1924
      Advisor: Frank Costigliola
      Position: Assistant Professor of History, Murray State University
    • Aimee Loiselle, Creating Norma Rae: The Erasure of Puerto Rican Needleworkers and Southern Labor Activists in a Neoliberal Icon” (2020 OAH Lerner-Scott Prize)
      Advisor: Micki McElya
      Position: Assistant Professor, Central Connecticut State University
    • Amy L. Sopcak-Joseph, “Fashioning American Women: Godey’s Lady’s Book, Female Consumers, and Periodical Publishing in the Nineteenth Century”
      Advisor: Cornelia Dayton
      Position: Assistant Professor, Wilkes University

    2018

    • Jeff Egan, “Watershed Decisions: The Environmental History of the Quabbin Reservoir, 1870-1945”
      Advisor: Robert Gross
      Position: Analyst & Category Buyer, Sanofi Genzyme
    • Michael Limberg, “Abundant Life: US Aid and Development in the Near East, 1919-39”
      Advisor: Frank Costigliola
      Position: Teacher, Fayetteville Academy
    • Mary-Margaret Mahoney, “Books as Medicine: A History of the Use of Reading to Treat the Self and Its Diseases in the Anglophone World, 1800-1940”
      Advisor: Christopher Clark
      Position: Digital Scholarship Coordinator, Trinity College (CT)
    • Jorell Meléndez-Badillo, “Our Turn to Speak: The Creation of Puerto Rican Workers’ Intellectual Communities, 1897-1940”
      Advisor: Blanca Silvestrini
      Position: Assistant Professor, University of Wisconsin-Madison
    • Teresa Vergara, “The Copacabana Indigenous Elite: Formation, Identity and Negotiations, Lima, 1590 – 1767”
      Advisor: Karen Spalding
      Position: Assistant Professor, Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú

    2017

    • Jessica Linker, “The Fruits of their Labor: Women’s Scientific Practice in Early America”
      Advisor: Cornelia Dayton
      Position: Assistant Professor of History, Northeastern University
    • Catherine Page, “The Human Touch in Banking: Women Bank Officers in the United States, 1870-1930”
      Advisor: Christopher Clark
      Position: Lecturer, University of New Haven

    2016

    • Allison Horrocks, “Good Will Ambassador with a Cookbook: Flemmie Kittrell and the International Politics of Home Economics”
      Advisor: Micki McElya
      Position: Historian, National Park Service
    • Anthony Antonucci, “Americans and the Mezzogiorno: United States Relations with the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies from Thomas Jefferson to Herman Melville, 1783-1861”
      Advisor: Robert Gross
      Position: Lecturer, Citrus College
    • Linda Meditz, “God’s Captive: Piety and Ministry in the Diary and Life of Stephen Williams”
      Advisor: Cornelia Dayton
      Position: Lecturer, University of Connecticut

    2015

    • Erin Bartram, “Jane Minot Sedgwick II and the World of American Catholic Converts, 1820-1890”
      Advisor: Richard Brown
      Position: School Programs Coordinator, Mark Twain House
    • Eric Sacco, “”Le Babylon de la Mediterranee:” Nice and Its Casinos, 1815 – 1939”
      Advisor: Sylvia Schafer
      Position: Teacher, Cheshire Academy

    2014

    • Eric J. Fauss, “The Wild Lands of Gotham: City and Nature in Jamaica Bay, New York, 1880-1994”
      Advisor: Peter Baldwin
      Position: Assistant Professor, Amarillo College
    • Lauren E. Madak, “Arms and Letters: Martial Imagery and Rhetoric of English and Spanish Women’s Writings, 1540-1615”
      Advisor: Kenneth Gouwens
      Position: Assistant Professor, Florida Southwestern State College
    • Thomas D. Westerman, “Rough and Ready Relief: American Identity, Humanitarian Experience, and the Commission for Relief in Belgium, 1914-1917”
      Advisor: Frank Costigliola
      Position: Teacher, Porter-Gaud School

    2013 

    • Omar H. Dphrepaulezz, “’The Right Sort of White Men’: General Leonard Wood and the U. S. Army in the Southern Philippines, 1898-1906” (2013)
      Advisor: Frank Costigliola
      Position: Assistant Professor, SUNY Oneonta
    • Daniel A. Simmons, “Must Be the Season of the Witch: The Repression and Harassment of Rock and Folk Music during the Long Sixties”
      Advisor: Jeffrey Ogbar

    2012

    • Alea R. Henle, “Preserving the Past, Making History: Historical Societies in the Early United States”
      Advisor: Richard Brown
      Position: Associate Librarian, Head of Access & Borrow, Miami University (Ohio)
    • Dominic F. Debrincat, “Yankee Jurisprudence: The Court and Legal Culture of Colonial New London County, Connecticut”
      Advisor: Cornelia Dayton
      Position: Associate Professor, Missouri Western State University
    • Karl J. Trybus, “The Second Spanish Republic and Civil War: The View from Pope Pius XI’s Vatican”
      Advisor: Gustavo Nanclares (LCL)
      Position: Associate Professor, Limestone College
    • Michael E. Neagle, “Isle of Pines, U.S.A.: The Other Side of American Expansion in Cuba, 1898-1960”
      Advisor: Frank Costigliola
      Position: Associate Professor, Nichols College
    • Patrick G. Blythe, “Visions of a Peaceful World: Locating Peace in Early-Nineteenth Century New England, 1815-1850”
      Advisor: Cornelia Dayton
      Position: Professor, Seminole State College
    • Sherry Zane (Isaacson), “The Newport Sex Scandal and the Early-Twentieth-Century Origins of the U.S. National Security State”
      Advisor: Frank Costigliola
      Position: Interim Director of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, University of Connecticut

    2011

    • Christopher E. Curry, “Liberty Extended, Liberty Denied: The Black Loyalist Quest for Freedom in the Bahamas”
      Advisor: Melina Pappademos
      Position: Assistant Professor, College of the Bahamas
    • Jonathan Michaels, “The Liberal Dilemma: University Students Confront McCarthyism, 1947-1954”
      Advisor: Robert Asher
      Position: Lecturer, University of Connecticut Hartford
    • Paulo Contreras, “Searching for Modernization and Development: the United States and Peru, 1950-1975”
      Advisor: Frank Costigliola
      Position: Lecturer, University of Connecticut Avery Point

    2010

    • Barbara J. Beeching, “Great Expectations: Family and Community in Nineteenth Century Black Hartford”
      Advisor: Altina Waller
      Position: Independent scholar

    2009

    • Brian D. Carroll, “From Warrior to Soldier: New England Indians in the Colonial Military, 1675-1763”
      Advisor: Richard Brown
    • Catherine L. Thompson, “”Dr. Greene is Not God!:” Patient-Physicians Relations in Early America, 1750-1850”
      Advisor: Cornelia Dayton
      Position: Visiting Assistant Professor, Holy Cross College
    • Onek Adyanga, “Modes of British Imperial Control of Africa: A Case Study of Uganda, 1890-1990”
      Advisor: Amii Omara-Ottunu
      Position: Associate Professor, Millersville University
    • D. Elliotte Draegor, “Losing Ground: Land Loss Among the Mashantucket Pequot and the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribes in the Nineteenth Century”
      Advisor: Nancy Shoemaker
    • Robb K. Haberman, “Periodical Publics: Magazines and Literary Networks in Post-Revolutionary America”
      Advisor: Richard Brown
      Position: Associate Editor, John Jay Papers, Columbia University

    2008

    • Brian C. Mullgardt, “”Don’t Come to Chicago…:” The Events Surrounding the 1968 Democratic National Convention as Experienced by Chicago Residents”
      Advisor: Peter Baldwin
      Position: Associate Professor, Millikin University

    2006

    • Jennifer L. Heckard, “The Crossroads of Empire: The 1817 Liberation and Occupation of Amelia Island, East Florida”
      Advisor: Frank Costigliola
      Position: Teacher, Friendship Collegiate Academy
    • Mehmed Ali, “To Save a City: From Urban Renewal to Historic Preservation in Lowell, Massachusetts, 1920- 1978”
      Advisor: Bruce Stave
      Position: Director of the Muir S. Fairchild Research Information Center, Air University, Maxwell Air Force Base
    • Michael Donoghue, “Imperial Sunset: Race, Identity, and Gender in the Panama Canal Zone, 1939—1979”
      Advisor: Frank Costigliola
      Position: Associate Professor, Marquette University
    • Thomas M. Slopnick, “In the Shadow of Herbert Hoover: The Republican Party and the Politics of Defeat, 1932—1936”
      Advisor: Jeffrey Ogbar
      Position: Lecturer, Manchester Community College
    • Bradley R. Hale, “The Soul of Empire: The Society of Missionaries of Africa in Colonial Algeria, 1919—1939”
      Advisor: Edmund Wherle
      Position: Associate Professor, Azusa Pacific University

    2005

    • Charles D. McGraw, “”Every Nurse is Not a Sister”: Sex, Work, and the Invention of the Spanish-American War Nurse”
      Advisor: Susan Porter Benson
      Position: Associate Professor, University of Tampa
    • Jamie H. Eves, “A Valley White with Mist: Settlers, Nature, and Culture in a North Woods River Valley, 1800—1870”
      Advisor: Richard Brown
      Position: Director, Windham Textile & History Museum & Lecturer, University of Connecticut
    • Jeffrey D. Bass, “Cold Warrior Coterie: Senate Democrats and Presidential Foreign Policy, 1953—1973”
      Advisor: Frank Costigliola
      Position: Professor, Quinnipiac University
    • Leslie A. Frank, “”I Never Really Took Much Notice”: The FHA and Suburbanization in the Providence Metropolitan Area, 1934—1955”
      Advisor: Peter Baldwin & Susan Porter Benson
    • Michael D. Cunningham, “Seashells on the Mountains: Antonio Vallisneri, Fossils, and the Republic of Letters”
      Advisor: John Davis
      Position: Academic Advisor, University of Connecticut
    • Steven H. Park, “The Burning of HMS Gaspee and the Limits of Eighteenth-Century British Imperial Power”
      Advisor: Richard Brown
      Position: Director of Academic Technology, Wheaton College (IL)
    • Janet Rider, “A Quest for Self-Reverence: The Social and Intellectual World of Judith Sargent Murray”
      Advisor: Richard Brown
      Position: Professor, Johnson County Community College