Graduate Research

Research Highlight: Hayden Nelson

PhD Candidate Hayden Nelson published the article, "Smoke from their Fires; Or, Environment and Region in Canada and the Upper Midwest," appeared in the Fall 2024 issue of the Middle West Review. This article examined the history and legacies of wildfires and their smoke from the deadly forest fires the Upper Midwest experienced in the late-nineteenth century to the present. He argues that while large fire events are mostly absent from the region today, the region continues to be defined by a relationship to wildfires through their smoke due to the increasing frequency and size of forest fires in Canada, whose smoke often shrouds the Upper Midwest because of the jet stream

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Research Highlight: Julia Haoran Ni

Julia Haoran Ni published an article titled ““Unqualified” and “Licentious” Nü Xiaozhang in Republican China: Sexism toward Professional Women in School Leadership Positions," in the Journal of Research on Women in Modern Chinese History. This Journal is an open-accessed THCI (Taiwan Humanities Core Index) journal, hosted by Academia Sinica. Ni argues in her article that women's educational qualifications and their sexual morality as school principals were easily questioned in male-dominated Republican China: as found in legal archives and other historical sources, being “unqualified” and “licentious” were the most two common accusations leveled against them. This gender tension further reveals Chinese male intellectuals' territoriality of Chinese morality and traditions during China's modernization process.

This article is currently open access and can be read by clicking the link below.

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Research Highlight: Amy Millet

Amy Millet published an article titled “Global Connections and Culinary Conceptions of Cultural Identity in Austrian Food Literature of the Nineteenth Century,” in the Journal of Austrian Studies. The article explores how Austrian cookbooks and magazines invited readers (and eaters) to expand their conceptions of cultural belonging beyond the confines of contemporary nationalist narratives and reimagine the contours of “Austrian-ness” to include tastes and ideas from around the world. In this way, Millet argues, food culture and practices melded day-to-day household routines with the Habsburg project of becoming imperial and solidified Austria’s position at a crossroads of the nineteenth century’s global exchange of goods and ideas.

Citation: “Global Connections and Culinary Conceptions of Cultural Identity in Austrian Food Literature of the Nineteenth Century.” Journal of Austrian Studies 56, no. 2 (Summer 2023): 41-51.

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Defended Dissertations

The following dissertations were defended at the completion of the 2023-2024 academic year

  • Paul Schwennessen: "Conquering Beasts: How Animals Shaped the De Soto and Coro-nado Entradas, 1539-1543" (2023) | Advised by Robert Schwaller
  • Adam Rodger "Fighting the Myth of Racial Democracy from Within – Black Political Action in Brazil (mid 1970s - early 2000s) (2023) Advised by Erik Scott
  • Eric Funabashi: "Learning to Cook: The Pedagogical and Ideological Nature of Meiji Domestic Cookbooks." (2023) Advised by Eric C. Rath

Past Dissertations

  • Preston Decker: "Writing a Modern Land: Discourses of Environmental Modernity in Twentieth-century Xinjiang," (2023) | Advised by Megan Greene
  • João Batista N.Gregoire "Fighting the Myth of Racial Democracy from Within – Black Political Action in Brazil (mid 1970s - early 2000s) (2023) Advised by Elizabeth Kuznesof
  • Emily Raymond "The Man-Midwife's Tale: Medical Professionalism and Masculinity in Eighteenth-Century British Midwifery." (2023) Advised by Christopher E. Forth
  • Brian Griswold “Westmoreland's and Abrams' Lieutenants: Field Force Commanders of the Vietnam War, 1965-1971.” (2023) Advised by Adrian Lewis 
  • Paul Landsberg, "Deploy Globally, Train Locally: the U.S. Army and the Global Environment." (2022) | Advised by Sheyda Jahanbani 
  • Brian Trump, "Sex Crimes and Criminal Sexuality: Legislating and Policing Community Boundaries in Nebraska, 1880-1980" (2022) | Advised by Beth Bailey
  • Alyssa Cole, "Movement before the Movement: Black Hospitals in Kansas City, 1890-1940" (2022) | Advised by David Roediger 
  • Dan Chmill, “Taking the Waters: A Hydrological History of Health and Leisure in Hot Springs National Park, 1832-1932." (2022) | Advised by Sheyda Jahanbani
  • Marjorie Galelli, "Two Sides of the Same COIN: A History of the United States and Counterinsurgency During Operation Iraqi Freedom” (2021) | Advised by Beth Bailey
  • Ariel LaGue, "'Right to Painless Death:' The Fight for Humane Animal Slaughter in the Cold War United States" (2021) | Advised by Sara Gregg
  • Melissa Lunney, "What is a Witch Worth? The Value of Men at the Conclusion of the Salem Witch Trials" (2021) | Advised by Kim Warren
  • Andrew Avery, “Land of the Midnight Sun: Antarctica and the British Empire, 1893-Present” (2020) | Advised by Erik Scott
  • Mandi Barnard, “A Moral Good: The Gendered Differentiation of Working-Class Girls’ Education in Britain: 1902-1945” (2020) | Advised by Nathan Wood
  • Dusty Clark, "Tradition Reinvented: The Reimagination of Kanpō Medicine in Twentieth Century Japan" (2020) | Advised by Megan Greene
  • David Hill, “The Perception of Holiness: Spiritual Idealism in Late Medieval & Reformation England, 1350-1539” (2020) | Advised by Eve Levin
  • Michael Hill, "The Imperial Drawbridge: Alaska and the U.S. Pacific Empire" (2021) | Advised by Sheyda Jahanbani and Drew Isenberg
  • Alana Holland, “The Art of Retribution: Holocaust Memory and Justice in People’s Poland and Soviet Lithuania, 1944-69” (2020) | Advised by Nathan Wood
  • Robert Jameson, “Silicon’s Second World: Scarcity, Political Indifference and Innovation in Czechoslovak Computing, 1964-1994” (2020) | Advised by Nathan Wood
  • Patrick Klinger, “The Climate of Union: An Environmental History of the Anglo-Scottish Union, circa 1660-1707” (2020) | Advised by Gregory Cushman
  • Ashley Neale, “Restructuring the National Security State: President Richard M. Nixon, the War in Vietnam, and Executive Reorganization” (2020) | Advised by David Farber
  • Ximena Sevilla Benavides, “On the Edge of the Wild: Representations of the Montaña Region of Peru before the Rubber Boom (1530-1870)” (2020) | Advised by Gregory Cushman
  • Hosub Shim, “The Forgotten Army: The Republic of Korea Forces’ Conduct in the Vietnam War, 1965-1973” (2020) | Advised by Adrian Lewis
  • Jennifer Warburton, “The Crisis of Protestant Dissenting Identity on the Eve of the American Revolution” (2020) | Advised by Luis Corteguera