Recent PhD recipients

Recent Recipients of The Doctorate in History from Vanderbilt

	Shawn Mosher - PhD December 2018 Dissertation title: "Competing Ideals: How Commerce, Christianity and Civilization Shaped Nationhood in Nineteenth-Century Liberia"
	Katherine Lazo - PhD September 2018 Dissertation title: 'Rigour upon men's consciences': National Identity, Religion, and English Catholics during the Interregnum"
	Sean Bortz - PhD September 2018 Dissertation title: "Thinking with Jews: Jews and Judaism and the Struggle for Orthodoxy in late Medieval and Reformation England" Instructor of History, Cumberland University
	Christopher Mapes - PhD August 2018 Dissertation title: "Germany's Slavery Problem during the Sattelzeit, 1750-1850" Post-doctoral fellow, Digital Humanities Center, Vanderbilt University
	Dean Bruno - PhD August 2018 Dissertation title: "A Place Called Home: Dispossession and Remembrance of a Central New York Landscape." Teaching Assistant Professor, Director of Undergraduate Advising, North Carolina State University
	Danielle Picard - PhD August 2018 Dissertation title: "Analyzing the Human Factor in British Industrial Psychology, 1919-1939." Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of History, Vanderbilt University Administrative Assistant to the Vanderbilt History Seminar (VHS)
	J'Nese Williams - PhD August 2018 Dissertation title: "Imperial Intervention: Botanic Gardens, Science, and Colonial Administration in the British Empire, Late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries." Two-year Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at the Stanford Humanities Center, Stanford University
	Cassandra Painter - PhD August 2018 Dissertation title: "The Life and Afterlife of Anna Katharina Emmerick: Reimagining Catholicism in Modern Germany." Lilly Postdoctoral Fellow and Lecturer in History, Valparaiso University
	Daniel Genkins - PhD August 2018 Dissertation title: "Entangled Empires: Anglo-Spanish Competition in the Seventeenth-Century Caribbean" CLIR/DLF Postdoctoral Fellow in Data Curation for Latin American and Caribbean Studies at the John Carter Brown Library at Brown University
	Aileen Teague - PhD June 2018 Dissertation title: "Americanizing Mexican Drug Enforcement: The War on Drugs in Mexican Politics and Society, 1964-1982" Two-year postdoctoral fellowship at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University Assistant Professor of International Affairs at Texas A&M University's Bush School of Government and Public Service, starting in the Fall of 2020.
	William Murrell - PhD June 2018 Dissertation title: "Dragomans and Crusaders: the Role of Translators and Translation in the Eastern Mediterranean" Launch Director and Lecturer in Church History, Every Nation Theological Seminary
	Marjorie Brown - PhD August 2017 Dissertation title: "Diplomatic Ties: Slavery and Diplomacy in the Gulf Coast Region, 1836-1845" Professor, Houston Community College
	Anthony C. Siracusa - PhD August 2017 Dissertation title: "A More Durable Weapon: Religion and Nonviolence in the Black Freedom Struggle, 1918-1960" Engaged Learning Specialist, Collaborate for Community Engagement, Colorado College
	Kelly O'Reilly - PhD August 2017 Dissertation title: "Of the Poor, By the Poor, or For the Poor": Community Health Centers and the War on Poverty" Student at Yale Law School, J.D. expected in 2020
	Lance Ingwersen - PhD August 2017 Dissertation title: "Mexico City in the Age of Theater, 1830-1901" Visiting Assistant Professor of History, Denison University
	Ashish Koul - PhD August 2017 Dissertation title: "Making New Muslim Arains: Reform, Law and Politics in Colonial Punjab, 1890's-1940s" Assistant Professor of History, Northwestern University, tenure-track
	Sonja Ostrow - PhD August 2017 Dissertation title: "Polling after Fascism: Opinion Research, Mass Society, and Democratic Fragility in the Federal Republic of Germany, 1945-1960" Assistant Professor of Arts and Humanities, the Minerva Schools at Keck Graduate Institute (KGI)
	Lu Sun - PhD May 2017 Dissertation title: "Prisoners, Saboteurs, and Diplomats: An International History of the Diplomacy of Captivity During and Following the Korean War" Assistant Professor of History, Bryant University's China campus; Zhuhai, Guangdong Province, China
	Alex Jacobs - PhD December 2016 Dissertation title: ""After the Enlightenment: Progress, Tradition, and the Foundations of Democracy in Modern American Thought" Lecturer, Department of American Studies, Vanderbilt University
	Jason Bates - PhD December 2016 Dissertation title: "An Opium-Consuming Nation: Race, Government Power, and the American Penal State, 1870-1930"
	Kara Schultz - PhD December 2016 Dissertation title: "An African South Atlantic: La Plata, Brazil, and Angola, 1580-1680" Postdoctoral Fellow and Project Manager for the Slave Societies Digital Archive under Professor Jane Landers
	Tizoc Chavez - PhD August 2016 Dissertation title: "Presidential Parley: Personal Diplomacy and the Modern Presidency" Advisor, CAS Pre-major Academic Advising; Lecturer, Department of Political Science, Vanderbilt University
	Jenifer Dodd - PhD August 2016 Dissertation title: "'Compulsive Rapism': Psychiatric Approaches to Sexual Violence in the 1980s" Mellon Fellow at Berea College in Berea, Kentucky
	Michell Chresfield - PhD August 2016 Dissertation title: "Problem and Promise: 'Scientific Experts and the Mixed-Blood',1870-1970" Lecturer of African-American History, tenure-track, University of Birmingham-UK
	Paula Gajewski - PhD May 2016 Dissertation title: "The New York Stock Exchange and the Transformation of Retirement in America"
	Jessica Burch - PhD August 2015 Dissertation Title: "Soap and Hope": Direct Sales and the Culture of Work and Capitalism in Postwar America. Business and Liberal Arts Instructor, Management Department, David Eccles School of Business, University of Utah
	Miriam Martin Erickson - PhD August 2015 Dissertation Title "The Black Auxiliary Troops of King Carlos IV: African Diaspora in the Entangled Spanish Atlantic World, 1791-1818". Pre-Major Academic Advisor for College of Arts & Science; Lecturer in History, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN
	Amy Gant Tan - PhD August 2015 Dissertation Title "Richard Bernard and His Publics: A Puritan Minister as Author" Research Assistant Professor of History; Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN (2016-2017)
	Jonathan Hansen - PhD May 2015 Dissertation Title "Development at the Margins: Missionaries, the State, and the Transformation of Marsabit, Kenya in the Twentieth Century"
	Nicolette Kostiw - PhD May 2015 Dissertation Title "Child and Citizen" The Tutelage of Minors, Slavery, and Transition in Rio de Janeiro, 1871-1900". Assistant Director, Center for Latin American Studies,Vanderbilt University
	Matthew Owen - PhD December 2014 Dissertation Title "For the Progress of Man: The TVA, Electric Power, and the Environment,1939-1969"' Research Associate, Tennessee Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations
	Ansley Quiros - PhD December 2014 Dissertation Title "'The Devil and Jesus in Americus, Georgia': Lived Theology in the Civil Rights Movement in Americus, GA, 1942-1978." Assistant Professor, tenure track, University of North Alabama
	Courtney Campbell - PhD August 2014 Dissertation Title "The Brazilian Northeast, Inside Out: Region, Nation, and Globalization (1926-1968)." Lecturer of Latin American History at the University of Birmingham, England, tenure-track
	Jeremy DeWaal - PhD August 2014 Dissertation Title "Redemptive Geographies: The Turn to Local Heimat in Early Postwar West Germany, 1945-1965." Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of History, University of Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany
	Frances Kolb - PhD August 2014 Dissertation Title "Contesting Borderlands: Policy and Practice in Spanish Louisiana, 1765-1800." Instructor in the History Department at Western Kentucky University, 2016-2017.
	Angela Sutton - PhD August 2014 Dissertation Title "Mercantile Culture of the Gold Coast Slave Trade in the Atlantic World, 1621-1720." Mellon Partners for Humanities Education Fellowship in partnership with Vanderbilt University, post-doctoral fellow, Slave Societies Digital Archive (2018-2020)
	Erin Woodruff Stone - PhD May 2014 Dissertation Title "Indian Harvest: The Rise of the Indigenous Slave Trade and Diaspora from Espanola to the Circum-Caribbean, 1492-1542" Assistant Professor of Latin American History, tenure track, University of West Florida
	Adam Richard Wilsman - PhD May 2014 Dissertation Title "Our Enemy's Enemy: Human Rights and the U.S. Intervention in El Salvador, 1977-1992" Upper School History Teacher, Harpeth Hall, Nashville, Tennessee
	Nicholas Villanueva - PhD December 2013 Dissertation Title "No Place of Refuge: Mexicans, Anglos, and Violence in the Texas Borderland, 1900-1920". Director of Critical Sports Studies, Department of Ethnic Studies, University of Colorado, Boulder.
	Caree Banton - PhD August 2013 Dissertation Title " 'More Auspicious Shores": Post-Emancipation Barbadian Emigrants in Pursuit of Freedom, Citizenship, and Nationhood in Liberia, 1834-1912" Assistant Professor of History and African American Studies, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville
	Stephen Kennedy Harrison - PhD August 2013 Dissertation Title "Communism and Christianity: Missionaries and The Communist Seizure of Power In China" Lecturer at Wenzhou-Kean University, 2014-2015.
	Joanna Mazurska - PhD August 2013 Dissertation Title "Making Sense of Czeslaw Milosz: A Poet's Formative Dialogue with his Transnational Audiences"
	Kevin Vanzant - PhD August 2013 Dissertation Title " 'We Sweat and Toil": Self-Interest, Labor, and the Power of "The People" in Early America Politics, 1607-1692". Visiting Professor, Tennessee State University and Visiting Scholar in History, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN through the Mellon Partners Postdoctoral Fellowship
	William Hardin - PhD May 2013 Dissertation Title "Litigating the Lash: Quaker Emancipator Robert Pleasants, the Law of Slavery and the Meaning of Manumission in Revolutionary and Early National Virginia” Upper School History Teacher at Montgomery Bell Academy, Nashville TN
	Erica Hayden - PhD May 2013 Dissertation Title "Plunged into a Vortex of Iniquity”: Female Criminality and Punishment in Pennsylvania, 1820-1860” Assistant Professor in History, tenure track, Trevecca Nazarene University, Nashville, TN
	Deanna Matheuszik - PhD May 2013 Dissertation Title "The Angel Paradox: Elizabeth Fry and the Role of Gender and Religion in Nineteenth-Century Britain” Visiting Assistant Professor, Modern European History, University of Mississippi, 2014-15
	Patrick Jackson - PhD December 2012 Dissertation Title "Lost: American Evangelicals in the Public Square, 1925-1955" Nationally Competitive Fellowship Advisor, and Assistant Professor of History and Religious Studies at Allegheny College, PA
	William Bishop - PhD August 2012 Dissertation Title "Diplomacy in Black and White: America’s Contribution to the Search for Zimbabwean Independence, 1965-1980 " Upper Division History Teacher, Casady School, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
	Cheryl A. Hudson - PhD December 2011 Dissertation Title "Making Modern Citizens: Political Culture in Chicago, 1890-1930" Lecturer in American History at the University of Liverpool, England
	Crystal A. deGregory – PhD May 2011 Dissertation Title “Raising a Nonviolent Army: Four Nashville Black Colleges and the Century-Long Struggle for Civil Rights, 1830s-1930s
	Christina Dickerson Cousin – PhD May 2011 “Diplomats, Soldiers, and Slaveholders: The Coulon de Villiers Family in New France, 1700-1763” Visiting Professor of History at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, CT
	Rachel Donaldson – PhD May 2011 Dissertation Title “Music for the People: The Folk Music Revival and American Identity, 1930-1970” Assistant Professor in Public History, tenure track, College of Charleston
	David C. LaFevor - May 2011 Dissertation: “Forging the Masculine and Modern Nation: Race, Identity and the Public Sphere in Cuba and Mexico, 1890s – 1930s” Assistant Professor of Latin American History and Digital Humanities, tenure track, University of Texas, Arlington
	Michael Boden – December 2010 Dissertation: “The First Red Clausewitz: Friedrich Engels and Nineteenth-Century Socialist Military Thought” Lieutenant Colonel, US Army, Retired. Associate Dean of Academic Affairs, Dutchess Community College, Poughkeepsie, NY
	Natalie Inman – December 2010 Dissertation: “Networks in Negotiation: The Role of Family and Kinship in Intercultural Diplomacy on the Trans-Appalachian Frontier, 1680-1849” Assistant Professor, Cumberland University, Lebanon, TN
	Kurt Johnson – December 2010 Dissertation: “The Re-enchanted Body in fin de siècle German Culture" Term Instructor - History, University of Alaska, Anchorage
	Pablo Gomez – August 2010 Dissertation: “Bodies of Encounter: Health, Illness and Death in the Early Modern African-Spanish Caribbean” Associate Professor of Medical History and Bioethics, and History, University of Wisconsin, Madison Gómez's The Experiential Caribbean: Creating Knowledge and Healing in the Early Modern Atlantic won the 2018 Albert J. Raboteau Book Prize.
	Larry Rivers – August 2010 Dissertation: “‘Our God is Marching On’: James Hudson and the Theological Foundation of the Civil Rights Movement” Assistant Professor, tenure track, University of West Georgia
	Selena Sanderfer – August 2010 Dissertation: “For Land and Liberty: Black Territorial Separatism in the South, 1776-1904” Assistant Professor, tenure track, Western Kentucky University
	Mary Sanderson – May 2010 Dissertation: “ ‘Our Own Catholic Countrymen’: Religion, Loyalism, and Subjecthood in Britain and its Empire, 1775-1829” Lecturer, University of Dayton, Dayton, OH
	David Wheat – August 2009 Dissertation: “The Afro-Portuguese Maritime World and the Foundations of Spanish Caribbean Society, 1570-1640” Associate Professor (tenured), Michigan State University His book Atlantic Africa and the Spanish Caribbean, 1570-1640 won the American Historical Association's 2017 James A. Rawley Prize and the Lapidus Center for the Historical Analysis of Transatlantic Slavery's 2017 Harriet Tubman Prize.
	Michael Crane – May 2009 Dissertation: “Slavery on the Edge of Freedom: The Lower Ohio River Valley in the Antebellum and Civil War Era” Associate Professor of History, University of Arkansas - Fort Smith.
	Robert Hutton – May 2009 Dissertation: “‘Bloody Breathitt’: Power and Violence in the Mountain South” Senior Lecturer, University of Tennessee, Knoxville