Northern Illinois University
Department of History
College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

2024

Alexander Sosenko, “The Human Faces of Dissident Socialism: The Fight for Human Rights in Soviet Ukraine”
Director: Andy Bruno

2023

Joshua Fulton, “Performance Patriotism: The State Council of Defense, the Illinois Women’s Committee, and the Role of the State in World War I Illinois”

Director: Rosemary Feurer

Current Position: Associate Professor, Moraine Valley Community College

Journey Steward, “Immigrants or Prostitutes? Panic over White Slavery in France, Britain and the United States.”
Director: Sean Farrell

2022

John Alcade, “The Language of Citizenship: Italian Immigrants and English Fluency in the Courthouse, 1875-1921.”
Director: James Schmidt

Current Position: Director of History and Social Sciences Secondary Educator Licensure, Northern Illinois University

Kevin Luginbill, “Building an Imperial World: Imperial Ideologies and the Politics of the Tariff Reform Movement in the British Empire, 1900-14.”
Director: Sean Farrell

Current Position: Instructor, Ripon College / Lake Forest College

Megan Van Gorder, “What Mother Meant: Maternal Competence, Medical Authority, and Memory in the Case of Mary Bickerdyke (1820-1910).”
Director: James Schmidt

Current Position: Assistant Professor, Governor’s State University

2020

Justin Iverson, “Slavery's Soldiers: Arming Slave Revolts and Maroons in the British Atlantic, 1676-1823.”
Director: Aaron Fogleman
Current Position: Research Historian for an Air Force Wing in Biloxi, MS

Heeyoung Choi, “The Transnational Construction of National Music (Kugak): Musicking in the Korean Diaspora, 1903-1945.”
Director: E. Taylor Atkins

2019

Susan Kwosek, “‘Voodoo’ in the Black Atlantic, 1804-1915.”
Director: Aaron Fogleman
Current Position: Assistant Professor, South Carolina State University

Katrina Chludzinski, “The Search for 'Home': Anglo-Burman Identity at the End of Empire.”
Director: Trude Jacobsen

2018

Nicole Dressler, “The ‘Vile Commodity’: Convict Servitude, Authority, and the Rise of Humanitarianism in the Anglo-American World, 1718-1809.”
Director: Aaron Fogleman
Current Position: Lecturer at the College of William and Mary

John Marcos Reynolds, “System of Indebtedness: Wage Garnishment and Minority Communities in Chicago, 1950-1969."
Director: Rosemary Feurer

2017

Victoria Stewart, “Conscripting Johnny Reb and Billy Yank: The Plight and Consequence of Dodgers, Disruptors, and Resisters.” 
Director: James Schmidt
Current Position: Assistant Professor of History, Northwest Florida State College

Lily Ann Villaraza, “Yesterday, Today, And Tomorrow: A Study of Aurelio Tolentino’s Articulation of Nationalism and Identity Through Theater in the Philippines during the American Colonial Period.”
Director: Trude Jacobsen

2016

Edward Bates, “Disposable Labor: Urban and Rural Migrants from the Monterrey Center Through the Nuevo Luedo Corridor to San Antonio, 1915-25.”
Directors: Barbara Posadas and Rosemary Feurer
Current Position: Instructor, College of DuPage

Gregory Bereiter, “Clerics in Arms: Militant Catholicism and Religious Violence in France, 1584-1598.”
Director: Brian Sandberg
Current Position: Historian, U.S. Naval Heritage and History Command, Washington, D.C.

Katie Sutrina-Haney, “The Food Pyramid: Mexicans, Agribusiness, Governments, and Communities in the Midwest Migrant Stream.”
Director: Rosemary Feurer
Current Position: University Archivist, Indiana State University, Terre Haute, IN

Robert Fulton, “Managing an Information Explosion: Civilian Administration and the Army of Louis XIV, 1661-1701.”
Director: Brian Sandberg
Current Position: Assistant Professor of History, Emmanuel College

Scott Abel, “Piracy and Political Economy in Colonial Malaya.”
Director: Eric Jones

Mathieu Billings, “Potent Legacies: The Transformation of Irish-American Politics, 1815-40.”
Director: Sean Farrell
Current Position: Instructor of History, Indianapolis University 

2015

Andres Hijar, “Where is our Revolution? Workers in Ciudad Juarez and the Hidalgo Mining District in the 1930s.”
Director: Rosemary Feurer
Current Position: Assistant Professor of History, George Gwinnett College

Matthew Jagel, “Son Ngac Thanh, the United States, and the Cambodia.”
Director: Kenton Clymer
Current Position: Lecturer, St. Xavier’s University 

2013

Mellisa Campbell, “Gender Fantasy in US Antifeminist Discourse, 1890-1930.”
Director: James Schmidt

Coral Carlson, “Tin Dreams, People, Place and Product in Colonial Panang.”
Director: Trude Jacobsen

Jamie Mellott Hink, “Out of the Mouths of Babes and Sucklings’: Children and Youth in the Great Awakening.”
Director: Aaron Fogleman
Current Position: Instructor of History, Concordia University, Seward, NE

Michael Rossow, “Aid and Comfort to the Enemy: American Military Treatment of Prisoners of War During the Second World War.”
Director: Beatrix Hoffman
Current Position: Lecturer, Aurora University 

2012

Steven Barleen, “The Working Man Does Not Need to be Told How to Live’: The Illinois Saloon and the Struggle for Hegemony.”
Director: Rosemary Feurer
Current Position: Instructor of History, Clinton Community College, Clinton, IA

Scott Gurman, “Fillipiana and the Construction of Filipino in the American Media, 1898-1925”
Director: Kenton Clymer
Current Position: Lecturer of History, University of Wisconsin-Platteville

John W. Hink, Jr., “’The Accident of Birth’: Children, Birth Citizenship and the Constitution, 1898-2012”
Director: Barbara Posadas
Current Position: Assistant Professor of History, Concordia University, Seward, NE

James Prescott, “Phillipine-American Relations During the Magsaysay Period, 1946-57.”
Director: Kenton Clymer

2011

Sean Cadagin, “Becoming the Land of Lincoln: Emancipation and the Construction of Race in Illinois, 1853-1892.”
Director: James Schmidt
Current Position: Instructor, Lindenwood University

Eric Fox, “Clever Boston Sisters Eminent and Trenchant’: Class, Gender, and the Role of Women Among the Nineteenth-Century Boston Brahmins.”
Director: Beatrix Hoffman

Robert Hanserd, “The Gold Coast, Jamaica, and New York: Akan Ideas of Freedom in the Eighteenth-Century Afro-Atlantic.”
Director: Aaron Fogleman
Current Position: Lecturer, Columbia College

Cheryl Lemus, “The Maternity Racket’: Medicine, Consumerism, and the Modern American Pregnancy, 1876-1960.”
Director: Beatrix Hoffman
Current Position: Assistant Professor of History, Ashford University 

2010

Melissa Hayes, “Litigating Intimacy: The Legal Culture of Sexuality in Nineteenth-Century Illinois.”
Director: James Schmidt
Current Position: Interim Chair, Classics Department, Morthland College 

2009

David Burns, “The Radical Rites of Christ: Jesus and the Revolutions of Progressive Era America.”
Director: Rosemary Feurer
Publication: The Life and Death of the Radical Historical Jesus (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013).

Michael Hawkins, “Imperial Historicism and American Military Rule in the Philippines’ Muslim South.”
Directors: Kenton Clymer and Eric Jones
Current Position: Associate Professor of History, Creighton University
Publication: Making Moros: Historicism and American Military Rule in the Philippines’ Muslim South (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2013).

Stacey Randall, “With a Suspicious Mind and a Good Light: The History of Cervical Cancer Screening in the United States, 1920-80.”
Director: Beatrix Hoffman
Current Position: Director of Institutional Effectiveness, Waubonsee Community College 

 2008

Christopher Jaffe, “Us and Them: The Changing Boundaries of Acceptance and Exclusion for Incoming Ethnic and Racial Groups in Rockford, Illinois, 1880-1945.”
Director: Barbara Posadas
Current Position: Instructor, College of DuPage
Publications: Evaluating Baseball’s Managers: A History and Analysis and Performance in the Major Leagues, 1876 to 2000 (McFarland, 2009).

Tom Arne Mitrod, “So Great a Correspondence’: Native American Diplomacy in the Hudson Valley, 1609-1783.”
Director: Aaron Fogleman
Current Position: Associate Professor of History, University of Iowa
Publications: The Memory of All Ancient Customs: Native American Diplomacy in the Colonial Hudson Valley (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2012).

Thomas J. Vaughan, “The Tendencies of Affections: Natural Families in Nineteenth-Century Louisiana.”
Director: James Schmidt
Current Position: Lecturer, Waubonsee Community College