Defended Dissertations and Positions Since 2008
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
