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Recent PhD Graduates and Placement

Summer 2017

Brian Hamm

Dissertation title: Between the Foreign and the Familiar: The Portuguese, the Inquisition, and Local Society in Cartagena de Indias, 1550-1700
Advisor: Ida Altman and Nina Caputo
Employment: Adjunct Professor of History, University of Central Florida

Brandon Jett

Dissertation title: African Americans and the Police in the Jim Crow South, 1900-1945
Advisor: Jeffrey Adler
Employment: Visiting Assistant Professor of History, Rollins College

Alana Lord

Dissertation title: Constructing Royal Power: Host Desecration and Kingship in the Fourteenth-Century Crown of Aragon
Advisor: Nina Caputo and Bonnie Effros
Employment: Instructor of History at Bossier Parish Community College

Spring 2017

Amanda Beyer-Purvis

Dissertation title: “Equal Rights, Which Equal Law Must Protect”: Legal Challenges to Southern Segregationist Schools and Theological Racism in the South
Advisor: Elizabeth Dale
Employment: Program Coordinator, Cancer Clinical Trials Office, University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus

Brad Massey

Dissertation title: Defying the Sunbelt: An Economic and Environmental History of Tampa, 1950 to 1980
Advisor: Jack Davis
Employment: Professor of History, Polk State College

Mallory Szymanski

Dissertation title: Laboring to Uphold the Image of Suburbia: Representations of Deviant Sexual Desire in “The Virgin Suicides” and “Middlesex”
Advisor: Ben Wise
Employment: Postdoc, University Writing Program, University of Florida

Fall 2016

Matthew A. White

Dissertation title: “”Making a Community Space for Science: William Wagner and the Wagner Free Institute of Science of Philadelphia, 1813-1912.”
Advisor: Vassiliki Smocovitis
Employment: Director of Education, Smithsonian Institution’s National Postal Museum

Summer 2016

Rebecca Devlin

Dissertation title: “Bishops and Community in Northwestern Hispania: Transforming Roman Society, ca. 370 to 470 C.E.”
Advisor: Bonnie Effros
Employment: Visiting Assistant Professor, University of Louisville

Michael Gennaro

Dissertation title: “Nigeria in the Ring: Boxing, Masculinity, and Empire in Nigeria, 1930-1957”
Advisor: Luise White
Employment: Assistant Professor, Grambling State University

Christopher Woolley

Dissertation title: “In the Shade of the Ahuehuetl: Mexico City, Colonial Society, and the Forests of Central Mexico, 1325-1821”
Advisor: Ida Altman
Employment: Assistant Professor, University of North Carolina Pembroke

Spring 2016

Jennifer Lyon

Dissertation title: “Cleaning up Hell with a Tooth Brush”: Prohibition, Booze, and Bootlegging in Memphis, Tennessee, 1909 – 1939
Advisor: William Link
Employment: Social Media Manager, Colonial Williamsburg

Fall 2015

Brenden Kennedy

Dissertation title:The Yazoo Land Sales: Slavery, Speculation, and Capitalism in the Early American Republic
Advisor: Sean Adams
Employment: Assistant Professor of Economics, University of Montana Western

Rachel Rothstein

Dissertation title: ‘Small Numbers, Big Presence:’ Poland, the U.S., and the Power of Jewishness after 1968
Advisor: Mitch Hart and Alice Freifeld
Employment: Social Studies Teacher, The Weber School, Atlanta

Summer 2015

Roberto Chauca

Dissertation title: Science in the Jungle: Missionary Cartographic and Geographic Production of Early Modern Western Amazonia
Advisors: Mark Thurner and Ida Altman
Employment: Visiting Assistant Professor, Federal University of Brasilia

Jessica Lancia

Dissertation title:Gloria Steinem: the Transnational Life of an American Feminist
Advisor: Louise Newman
Employment: Chief Operations Officer, Docketlogic, Inc.

Robert Taber

Dissertation title: The Issue of Their Union: Family, Law, and Politics in Western Saint-Domingue, 1777 to 1789
Advisor: David Geggus
Employment: Assistant Professor of History, Fayetteville State University (North Carolina)

Erin Zavitz

Dissertation title: Revolutionary Memories: Celebrating and Commemorating the Haitian Revolution
Advisor: David Geggus
Employment: Assistant Professor, University of Montana-Western

Spring 2015

Michael Brandon

Dissertation title: Black Chicago’s New Deal Congressmen: Migration, Ghettoization, and the Origins of Civil Rights Politics
Advisors: William Link and Paul Ortiz
Employment: Instructor of Humanities, North Carolina School of Science and Math

William Fischer

Dissertation title: Ecuadorianizing the Oriente: State Formation and Nationalism in Ecuador’s Amazon, 1900-1969
Advisor: Mark Thurner
Employment: Assistant Professor, Missouri Southern State University

Shemuel Fleenor

Dissertation title: Manufacturing the “Magic City”: Miami from Frontier Through “Roaring Twenties”
Advisor: William Link
Employment: Full-time lecturer, Eastern Florida State College

K. Allen Kent

Dissertation title: “The Missing Link”: Black Police and Black Power in Chicago, 1965-1987
Advisors: Paul Ortiz and William Link
Employment: Research Historian, Southeastern Archeological Research, Inc.

Anthony Moffet

Dissertation title: Runaway Slaves and the Making of Georgia
Advisor: Jon Sensbach
Employment: Adjunct, Santa Fe Community College

Christopher Ruehlen

Dissertation title: The Specter of Subversion: Fears, Perceptions, and Reactions to Dissent in the Civil War North, 1861-1865
Advisors: Matthew Gallman and William Link
Employment: Humanities Instructor, The Hammond School

Jonathan Scholl

Dissertation title: At the Limits of Empire: Incas, Spaniards, and the Ava-Guarani (Chiriguanaes) on the Charcas-Chiriguana Frontier, Southeastern Andes (1450S to 1620S)
Advisor: Ida Altman
Employment: History Teacher, Ransom Everglades School

Fall 2014

Timothy Fritz

Dissertation title: Indians, Africans, and British Expansion in the Southeastern Borderlands: 1670-1763
Advisors: Jon Sensbach and Juliana Barr
Employment: Assistant Professor, Mount St. Mary’s College, Maryland

Tobin Shorey

Dissertation title: Navigating the ‘Drunken Republic’: The Juno and the Russian American Frontier, 1799-1811
Advisor: Stuart Finkel
Employment: Director of Curriculum Monitoring and Analysis at the Provost’s Office, UF.

Summer 2014

Anna Lankina

Dissertation title: “Reassessing Historiography in Late Antiquity: Philostorgius on Religion and Empire”
Advisor: Andrea Sterk
Previous degrees: BA Hillsdale College, MA University of Florida
Employment: Lecturer, Writing Center, University of Florida

Katalin Franciska Rac

Dissertation title: “Orientalism for the Nation: Jews and Oriental Scholarship in Modern Hungary”
Advisors: Alice Freifeld and Mitchell Hart
Employment: Library Coordinator for Jewish Heritage, Isser and Rae Price Library of Judacia, University of Florida

Roger Carey

Dissertation title: “Grinding It Out: Neoconservatives, Strategic Arms, and Protecting America, 1968-1980”
Advisor: Matthew Jacobs
Employment: Adjunct Associate Professor, Santa Fe College

Fall 2013 – Spring 2014

Joshua B. Abraham

Dissertation title: “From Scopes to Reagan: Presbyterians and the Persistence of Antievolution”
Advisor: Frederick Gregory
Previous degrees: B.S. Yale; M.A. West Virginia University
Employment: Adjunct professor, Eastfield College

Joseph A. Beatty

Dissertation title: “‘I Bear Witness’: One Man’s Quest for Faith and Community in the Atlantic World”
Advisor: Jon Sensbach
Previous degrees: B.A. James Madison University; M.A. University of Florida
Employment: Manager, Historical Research and Training, Colonial Williamsburg

Bridget M. Bihm-Manuel

Dissertation title: “Human Waste-Matters: Waste-Water, Public Health, and the Natural Environment in Twentieth-Century Florida”
Advisor: Jack E. Davis
Previous degrees: B.A. University of Louisiana-Lafayette, M.A. University of Florida

Employment: University of Florida Libraries

Erin Conlin

Dissertation title: “Invisible Hands in the Winter Garden: Power, Politics, and Florida’s Bahamian Farmworkers in the Twentieth Century”
Advisor: Joseph F. Spillane
Previous degrees: B.A. University of Wisconsin-Madison; M.A. University of Florida
Employment: Assistant Professor of History, Indiana University of Pennsylvania

Thomas Clay Cooper

Dissertation title: “The Flower of Southern Manhood: Race and Masculinity in Southern Higher Education, 1820-1900”
Advisor: William A. Link
Previous degrees: B.A. Furman University; M.A. University of Florida
Employment: Lecturer, Middle Tennessee State

Allison D. Fredette

Dissertation title: “True to Border Traditions: The Construction of Marriage and Marital Roles in the Mid-Nineteenth-Century Upper South”
Advisors: William A. Link and J. Matthew Gallman
Previous degrees: B.A. West Virginia University; M.A. West Virginia University
Employment: Lecturer, Appalachian State University

Sarah J. Kernan

Dissertation title: “The Cabanagem and Postcolonial Nation-Building in the Brazilian Amazon, 1830-1860”
Advisor: Jeffrey D. Needell
Previous degrees: B.A. University of Florida; M.A. University of Florida
Employment: Project Coordinator at Earnest Ventures, dab EVI

Reid S. Weber

Dissertation title: “A Preacher’s Priorities: Jan Hus and Late Medieval Homiletics”
Advisor: Howard P. Louthan
Previous degrees: B.A. Wayne State College; M.A. Northern Illinois University
Employment: Visiting Assistant Professor, Fitchburg State University

2013

Maria Angela Diaz

Dissertation: “Rising Tide of Empire: Gulf Coast Culture and Society during the Era of Expansion, 1845-1860”
Advisor: William Link & Matthew Gallman
Previous Degrees: B.A. University of North Carolina at Greensboro, M.A. University of Florida
Position: Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow, Texas Tech University

Andrei Gandila

Dissertation: “Marginal Money: Coins, Frontiers, and Barbarians in Early Byzantium, Sixth to Seventh Centuries”
Advisor: Florin Curta
Previous Degrees: B.A. and M.A., University of Bucharest
Position: Assistant Professor, University of Alabama in Hunstville

Matthew R. Hall

Dissertation: “Progress and Power: The Electrification of the Urban American South, 1880-1920”
Advisor: William Link & Sean Adams
Previous Degrees: B.A. Davidson College, M.A. University of Florida
Position: Assistant Director, Office of Development & Alumni Affairs, University of Florida Levin College of Law

Andrew Peter Holt

Dissertation: “Medieval Masculinity and the Crusades: The Clerical Creation of a New Warrior Identity”
Advisor: Florin Curta
Previous Degrees: B.A. University of North Florida, M.A. University of North Florida
Position: Associate Professor, Florida State College at Jacksonville

Robert S. Huffard

Dissertation: “Perilous Connections: Railroads, Capitalism and Mythmaking in the New South”
Advisor: Sean Adams
Previous Degrees: B.A. Penn State, M.A. University of Florida
Position: Assistant Professor, Lees-McRae College

Kenneth Frank Kasperski

Dissertation: “Noble Colonials: Americans and Filipinos, 1901-1940”
Advisor: William Link
Previous Degrees: B.A. University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana, M.A. Loyola University of Chicago

Stewart E. Kreitzer

Dissertation: “World Views in Collision? The Dialogue Between John Greene and Ernst Mayr (1959-2005)”
Advisor: Vassiliki Smocovitis
Previous Degrees: B.A. University of Florida, M.A. University of Florida

Robert J. McEachnie

Dissertation: “Constructing a Christian Community: The Sermons of Chromatius of Aquileia, 388-407”
Advisor: Andrea Sterk
Previous Degrees: B.A. Palm Beach Atlantic College, M.A. Wheaton College
Position: Lecturer in the Ancient World, University of North Carolina at Charlotte

Matthew Mingus

Dissertation: “Mapping Germany’s verzerrtes Bild: The Spatial (re)Construction of West Germany”
Advisor: Geoffrey J. Giles & Peter Bergmann
Previous Degrees:  B.A. Ashland University
Position: Assistant Professor, University of New Mexico-Gallup

Diana Reigelsperger

Dissertation: “Interethnic Relations and Settlement on the Spanish Florida Frontier, 1668-1763”
Advisor: Ida Altman
Previous Degrees: B.A. Flagler College, M.A. University of Florida
Position: Professor, Seminole State College

2012

Benjamin Lee Miller

Dissertation: “In God’s Presence: Chaplains, Missionaries, and the Religious Space of War and Peace”
Advisor: Matthew Gallman
Previous Degrees: B.A. William and Mary, M.A. University of Florida
Position: Teacher, Donna Klein Jewish Academy, Boca Raton, Florida

Leslie Kemp Poole

Dissertation: “Let Florida be Green: Women, Activism, and the Environmental Century, 1900-2000”
Advisor: Jack Davis
Previous Degrees: Master of Liberal Studies, Rollins College, 1991
B.S. Journalism, University of Florida, 1978
Position: Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies, Rollins College

Dawn Shedden

Dissertation: “Crossing Boundary Lines: Religion, Revolution, and Nationalism on the French-German Border, 1789-1840”
Advisor: Sheryl Kroen
Previous Degrees: B.A. Wellesley College, M.A. University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill
Position: CPT Assistant Professor, Eckerd College

Jennifer Snyder

Dissertation: “Black Flight: Tracing Loyalist Slave Diaspora Throughout the Revolutionary Atlantic World”
Advisor: Jon Sensbach
Previous Degrees: B.A. University of Georgia, M.A. University of Florida
Position: Associate Director of Digital, Art Institute of Chicago

Angela Zombek

Dissertation: “Tracing Stereotypes: A Study of Civil War Military Prisons in the Context of Nineteenth-Century Penitentiaries and Penal Development at the Ohio, Virginia, and D.C. Penitentiaries and at Camp Chase, Castle Thunder, and Old Capitol Military Prisons”
Advisor: Matthew Gallman & William Link
Previous Degrees: B.A. College of Wooster, M.A. University of Akron
Position: Assistant Professor, St. Petersburg College

2011

Jim Broomall (2011, Link)
Director, George Tyler Moore Center for the Study of the Civil War and Assistant Professor of History at Shepherd University, Shepherdstown, WV
Maury Wiseman (2011, Davis)
Adjunct, Sacramento Community College
Thomas Berson (2011, Davis)
Professor of History at Santa Fe College
Heather Bryson (2011, Link)
Professor, Valencia College
Emily Munce Casey (2011, Kwolek-Folland)
Mark Cole (2011, Giles)
College Associate Lecturer, Cleveland State University
Patrick Cosby (2011, Thurner)
Visiting Assistant Professor, Slippery Rock University
Eunhye Kwon (2011, Newman)
HK Research Assistant Professor, Research Institute of Comparative History and Culture at Hanyang University, Seoul, Korea
William Mercer (2011, Dale)
University of Tennessee, Knoxville
Roger Smith (2011, Sensbach)
Southern Consulting of St. Augustine, Inc

2010

Timothy Nevin (2010, White)
Michael Schoeppner (2010, Dale)

Assistant Professor, University of Maine-Farmington

Joel Black (2010, Dale)
Lecturer, Department of Urban and Regional Planning & the College of Law Liaison, University of Florida
Stephen Davis (2010, White)
Assistant Professor, University of Kentucky
Margaret McDonald (2010, Newman)
Executive Director of the Matheson Museum and Historical Society in Gainesville
Courtney Moore (2010, Link)
Assistant Professor, Santa Fe College
Alan Bliss (2010, Zieger)
Adjunct, North Florida College

2009

Michal Meyer (2009, Gregory)
Editor in Chief, Chemical Heritage, and Manager of Public Programming, Chemical Heritage Foundation
Mark Hove (2009, Newman)
U.S. State Department Office of the Historian
Daniel Simone (2009, Davis)
Curator, NASCAR Hall of Fame (Charlotte, NC)
Natanya Duncan (2009, Ward/Colburn)
Assistant Professor of History, Lehigh University
Michael Morse (2009, Hatch)
Chair, Humanities, Foreign Languages, and Behavioral Sciences, Lake Sumter State College

2008

Daniel Julich (2008, Hatch)
Assistant Professor, Sterling College
Pavel Murdzhev (2008, Curta)
Adjunct Instructor, University of Central Florida
John Catron (2008, Sensbach)
Douglas Gallagher (2008, Zieger)

Teacher, The Carrollton School

2007 and before

Sean Cunningham (2007, Link)
Associate Professor of History, Texas Tech University
Cowboy Conservatism: Texas and the Rise of the Modern Right (Kentucky, 2010)
Samuel M. Pierce (2007, Esenwein)
Assistant Professor, University of South Carolina Aiken
Carey O. Shellman (2007, Newman)
Assistant Professor of History, Georgia Gwinnett College
Juan Callirgos (2007, Thurner)
Assistant Professor, Catholic University of Lima
Barclay T. Key (2007, Davis/Ward)
Assistant Professor of History, University of Arkansas-Little Rock
Jeff Demsky (2007, Newman)
Assistant Professor of History, San Bernarndino Valley College
Mark Correll (2006, Gregory)
Associate Professor of History and Chair, Spring Harbor University
Lela Felter-Kerley (2006, Kroen)
Visiting Assistant Professor of History, University of South Florida
Michael Bowen (2006, Ward)
History Teacher, The Laurel School
John J. Langdale (2006, Wyatt-Brown)
Assistant Professor, Andrew College
Jace A. Stuckey (2006, Curta)
Assistant Professor of History, Marymount University
Benjamin H. Houston (2006, Ward)
Lecturer, Newcastle University (UK)
John W. White (2006, Ward)
Dean of Libraries at the College of Charleston
Kelly Minor (2005, Sensbach/Ward)
Adjunct Professor of History, Santa Fe College
Shane B. Stufflet (2005, Giles)
University of Central Florida and Lake Mary High School, Lake Mary, Florida
Shane Runyon (2005, Sensbach)
Vice President of Academic Affairs, Beacon College
Lawrence Rockwood (2005, McMahon)
Judith Hunt (2005, Wyatt-Brown)
Associate Dean, Loyola University, New Orleans
Steven P. Matthews (2004, McKnight)
Associate Professor of History, University of Minnesota Duluth
Julian Carlos Chambliss (2004, Adler)
Associate Professor of History, Rollins College
Stephen Ortiz (2004, Adler)
Associate Professor, Binghamton University (SUNY)
Randall J. Stephens (2003, Wyatt-Brown)
Reader in History and American Studies, Northumbria University, Newcastle, U.K.
Adam M. Howard (2003, McMahon)
Office of the Historian of the Department of State and George Washington University
Karen Yvett Morrison (2003, Needell)
Assistant Professor of History, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
John Gordon Deal (2003, Wyatt-Brown)
Archivist, Virginia State Archives in Richmond
Michael Scott Cole (2003, MacLeod)
Member of Faculty, Social and Behavioral Sciences, Florida Gulf Coast University
Bland Whitley (2003, Brundage)
Assistant Editor at the Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Princeton University
Jeremy David Cohen (2003, MacLeod)
Nancy Arlene Driscol Engle (2003, Wyatt-Brown)
Independent Scholar, Washington Women’s History Consortium
Marixa A. Lasso (2002, Geggus)
Faculty, Universidad Nacional de Colombia
Jeffrey E. Anderson (2002, Wyatt-Brown)
Assistant Professor of History, University of Louisiana at Monroe
Matthew Smith (2002, Geggus) (blog)
Lecturer, University of the West Indies, Jamaica
Jason Christopher Parker (2002, McMahon)
Associate Professor of History, Texas A&M
John E. Ashbrook (2002, Todorova)
Assistant Professor of History, Sweet Briar College
Marcus Gow Harvey (2001, Wyatt-Brown)
Lisa Tendrich Frank (2001, Wyatt-Brown)
Director, Florida Book Awards
Gary James Weisel (2001, Gregory)
Associate Professor of Physics and History of Science, Penn State University-Altoona
Douglas Tompson (2001, MacLeod)
Assistant Professor of History, Columbus State University (Georgia)
James Eric Meier (2000, H. Davis)
Adjunct Professor of History, University of Florida
Anders Geoffery Lewis (2000, Zieger)
History teacher, The Advanced Math and Science Academy Charter School, MA
Todd Holzgrefe Leedy (2000, H. Davis)
Lecturer and Assistant Director, Center for African Studies, University of Florida
Andrew Scott Moore (2000, Wyatt-Brown)
Assistant Professor of History, Saint Anselm College
Paul Thomas Lokken (2000, MacLeod)
Assistant Professor of History, Bryant University
Caleb Paul S. Finegan (1999)
Assistant Professor of History, Indiana University of Pennsylvania
James Covington Clark (1998)
Instructor, History Department, University of Central Florida
Andrew Kevin Frank (1998, Wyatt-Brown)
Associate Professor of History, Florida State University
Jan E. Bender Shetler (1998)
Associate Professor of History, Goshen College
Christopher Koehler (1998)
Department of History, Sacramento State College
Holly Elisabeth Hanson (1997)
Associate Professor of History, Mount Holyoke College
Stanley K. Deaton (1997)
Vice President for Programs and Scholarship, Georgia Historical Society
Assistant Editor, Georgia Historical Quarterly
Glenn Alber Crothers (1997)
Associate Professor of History, Indiana University Southeast
Mark James Smith (1997)
Mark I. Greenberg (1997)
Director of the Florida Studies Center, University of Southern Florida
Daniel Paul Kilbride (1997)
Associate Professor of History, John Carroll University
Michael D. Tegeder (1996)
Instructor, Department of History, Santa Fe Community College
Adjunct Professor of History, University of Florida
Christopher J. Olsen (1996)
Associate Professor of History and Chair, Indiana State University
Robert J. Malone (1996)
Adjunct Professor of History, University of Florida
Jeffrey Carl Mosher (1996)
Associate Professor of History, Texas Tech University
Joseph C. Thompson (1995)
Assistant History Professor, Montgomery College
Dianne B. White Oyler (1995)
Associate Professor of History, Fayetteville State University
Sherry Johnson (1995)
Associate Prof of History, Florida International University
Robert N. Lauriault (1994)
Lecturer, College of Written and Oral Communications, University of Florida
Fidel Iglesias (1994)
Attorney, Stuart, Florida
Stephanie Cole (1994)
Associate Professor of History, University of Texas Arlington
Daniel Wesley Stowell (1994)
Director and Editor, The Papers of Abraham Lincoln
Jeremy D. Stahl (1994)
Assistant Professor of History, Middle Tennessee State University
Roy Scott Sheffield (1994)
Associate Professor of History, Brevard University
Timothy Sloan Huebner (1993)
Associate Professor of History, Rhodes College
Jeffrey C. Brautigam (1993)
Associate Professor of History, Hanover College
Eric Walter Rise (1992)
Associate Chair and Professor of Sociology and Criminal Justice, University of Delaware
Carmen D. Anhalzer, (1992)
Professor of Anthropology, Boston University
Lou Falkner Williams (1991)
Associate Professor of History, Kansas State University
Steven George Noll (1991)
Senior Lecturer, Department of History, University of Florida
Christopher C. Morris (1991)
Associate Professor of History, University of Texas Arlington
Elizabeth B. Monroe (1989)
Professor of History, Indiana University
Alan V. LeBaron (1988)
Professor of History, Kennesaw State University
Jane L. Gilmer Landers (1988)
Professor of History, Vanderbilt University
Henry Philip Vogel (1987)
Professor of History, Latin American Center, Royal University of Leiden (Netherlands)
Rosemarijn Hoefte (1987)
Head of the Caribbean Department
Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies, Leiden
Susan Jane Fernandez (1987)
Professor of History, University of South Florida
David P. Adams, Jr. (1987)
Clinical Associate Professor of Family Medicine, Medical College of Georgia
Blair Pierce Turner (1986)
Professor of History and Political Science, Virginia Military Institute
David Lee Sowell (1986)
Professor of History, Juniata College
Rosemary Brana-Shute (1985)
Professor of History, The College of Charleston
Gary Michael Miller (1985)
Assistant Professor of History, Southern Oregon University
Gerald Eugene Poyo (1983)
Chair of the History Department and Professor of Latin American History
St. Mary’s College, San Antonio
Charles Bryan Lowry (1979)
Dean of Libraries, University of Maryland