Recent History Ph.D. Graduates
2017–2018
Peter Berard | Dissertation Title: "Managing Revolution: Cold War Counterinsurgency and Liberal Governance" Advisor: Seth Jacobs Position: Program and Training Manager, Scholarly Strategy Network |
Michael Franczak | Dissertation Title: "Free Markets, Human Rights, and Global Power: American Foreign Policy in the North-South Dialogue, 1971-1982" Advisors: James Cronin and Seth Jacobs Position: Henry Chauncey Post-Doctoral Fellowship, Yale University |
Craig Gallagher | Dissertation Title: "Covenants and Commerce: Scottish Networks and the Making of the British Atlantic World" Advisor: Owen Stanwood Position: Post-Doctoral Fellow, Boston College |
Felix Jiménez Botta | Dissertation Title: "Embracing Human Rights: Grassroots Solidarity Activism and Foreign Policy in Seventies West Germany" Advisor: Devin Pendas |
Adam Rathge | Dissertation Title: "Cannabis Cures: American Medicine, Mexican Marijuana, and the Origins of the War on Weed, 1840-1937" Advisor: Martin Summers Position: Director of Enrollment Strategies, University of Dayton |
Carolyn Twomey | Dissertation Title: "Living Water, Living Stone: The History and Material Culture of Baptism in Early Medieval England, c. 600 - c. 1200" Advisor: Robin Fleming |
Allison Vander Broek | Dissertation Title: "Rallying the Right-to-Lifers: Grassroots Religion and Politics in the Building of a Broad-Based Right-to-Life Movement, 1960-1984" Advisor: James O'Toole |
2016–2017
Peter Cajka | Dissertation Title: "The Rights of Conscience: The Rise of Tradition in America's Age of Fracture, 1940-1990" Advisor: James O'Toole Position: Post-Doctoral Fellow, Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism |
James Clifton | Dissertation Title: "A Nuclear Family: Britain, America, and NATO Rearmament during the Late Cold War" Advisor: James Cronin |
Elise Franklin | Dissertation Title: "A Slow End to Empire: Social Aid Associations, Family Migration, and Decolonization in France and Algeria, 1954-1981" Advisor: Julian Bourg Position: Assistant Professor, University of Louisiana at Lafayette |
Janet Kay | Dissertation Title: "Old, New, Borrowed, and Buried: Burial Practices in Fifth-Century Britain, 350-550 CE" Advisor: Robin Fleming Position: CSLA-Cotsen Fellowship in Late Antiquity, Princeton University |
Amy Limoncelli | Dissertation Title: "Great Britain and International Administration: Finding a New Role at the United Nations, 1941-1975" Advisor: James Cronin |
Christopher Staysniak | Dissertation Title: “‘The volunteer who seeks to help others also helps himself’: Religion, Class, and the Development of Youth Volunteer Service in the United States, 1934-1973" Advisor: James O'Toole |
Andrea Wenz
| Dissertation Title: "Bernardino Ochino of Siena: The Composition of the Italian Reformation at Home and Abroad" Advisors: Virginia Reinburg and Sarah Ross Position: Post-Doctoral Fellow, Boston College |
2015–2016
Rachel Ball-Phillips | Dissertation Title: "Film and the Shaping of Marathi Regionalism, 1932-1960" Advisor: Prasannan Parthasarathi Position: History Teacher, Grand Prairie ISD and Adjunct Professor, Southern Methodist University |
Mimi Cowan | Dissertation Title: "Immigrants, Nativists, and the Making of Chicago, 1842–1893" Advisor: Kevin Kenny |
Regan Eby | Dissertation Title: "Aristocratic Sociability and Monastic Patronage in Eleventh- and Early-Twelfth Century Brittany" Advisor: Robin Fleming |
Christopher Riedel | Dissertation Title: "Monastic Reform & Lay Religion in Æthelwold's Winchester" Advisor: Robin Fleming Position: Visiting Assistant Professor in History, Albion College |
Jesse Tumblin | Dissertation Title: "The Widening Gyre: Security, Sovereignty, and the Making of Modern Statehood in the British Empire, 1898-1931" Advisor: James Cronin Position: Adjunct Professor, Boston College |
2014–2015
Natalia King Rasmussen | Dissertation Title: “Friends of Freedom, Allies of Peace: African Americans, the Civil Rights Movement, and East Germany, 1949-1989” Advisor: Devin Pendas |
Seth Meehan | Dissertation Title: "Denominating a People: Congregational Laity, Church Disestablishment, and the Struggles of Denominationalism in Massachusetts, 1780-1865" Advisor: James O'Toole Position: Assistant Director of the Institute for Advanced Jesuit Studies, Boston College |
2013–2014
Casey Beaumier, SJ | Dissertation Title: "For Richer, For Poorer: Jesuit Secondary Education in America and the Challenge of Elitism" Advisor: James O'Toole Position: Director, Institute for Advanced Jesuit Studies, Boston College |
David Crane | Dissertation Title: "Dark Earth to Domesday: Towns in Anglo-Saxon England" Advisor: Robin Fleming Position: Assistant Dean of Credit Programs, Salem State University |
Jared Hardesty | Dissertation Title: "Slavery, Freedom, and Dependence in Pre-Revolutionary Boston" Advisor: Cynthia Lyerly Position: Associate Professor (tenured), Western Washington University |
Anna Kolchinsky | Dissertation Title: "Tuberculosis as Disease and Politics In Germany, 1871-1961" Advisors: James Cronin and Devin Pendas |
Jonathan Kuiken | Dissertation Title: “Empires of Energy: Britain, British Petroleum, Shell and the remaking of the international oil industry, 1957-1979” Advisor: James Cronin Position: Assistant Professor (tenure track), Wilkes University |
Gráinne McEvoy | Dissertation Title: "Justice and Order: American Catholic Social Thought and the Immigration Question in the Restriction Era, 1917-1965" Advisor: Kevin Kenny Position: Postdoctoral Fellowship, Trinity College Dublin |
Peter Moloney | Dissertation Title: "From Common Market to European Union: A New Model State?" Advisor: James Cronin |
2012–2013
Aniruddha Bose | Dissertation Title: "The Port of Calcutta (1860-1910): State Power, Technology, and Labor" Advisor: Prasannan Parthasarathi Position: Assistant Professor (tenure track), St. Francis University |
Ian Delahanty | Dissertation Title: "Immigrants in a Time of Civil War: The Irish, Slavery, and the Union, 1845-1865" Advisor: Kevin Kenny Position: Assistant Professor (tenure track), Springfield College |
Katherine Hubler | Dissertation Title: "Man's Duty to Woman: Men and the First Wave of German Feminism, 1865-1919" Advisors: Paul Breines and Devin Pendas Position: Instructor, Linn-Benton Community College |
Austin Mason | Dissertation Title: “Listening to the Early Medieval Dead: Religious Practices in Eastern Britain, 400–900 CE” Advisor: Robin Fleming Position: Assistant Professor, University of Minnesota |
Darren McDonald | Dissertation Title: "Crisis of Faith: Jimmy Carter, Religion, and the Making of U.S.-Middle East Foreign Policy" Advisor: Seth Jacobs Position: Interdepartmental Project Manager at Executive Office of Health and Human Services, State of Rhode Island |
Ted Miller | Dissertation: "Mavericks of the Metroplex: Dallas Republicans, the Southern Strategy, and the American Right, 1952-1964" Advisor: Lynn Lyerly Position: Assistant Teaching Professor, Northeastern University |
John Spiers | Dissertation Title: "Managing Growth: Suburbanization and Environmental Protection in Metropolitan Washington Since 1970" Advisor: Marilynn Johnson Position: Faculty Service Manager, Brigham and Women's Hospital |
2011–2012
Hidetaka Hirota | Dissertation Title: "Nativism, Citizenship and the Deportation of Paupers in Massachusetts, 1837-1883" Advisor: Kevin Kenny Position: Columbia Society of Fellows in the Humanities |
David McCowin | Dissertation Title: "'For Faith and for Freedom': American Catholic Manhood and the Holy Name Society in Boston, 1870-1960" Advisor: James O'Toole |
Megan Myers | Dissertation Title: "Moving Terrorists from the Streets to a Diamond-Shaped Table: The International History of the Northern Ireland Conflict, 1969-1999" Advisor: James Cronin Position: Permanent Instructor, Howard Community College |
2010–2011
Laura Baines-Walsh | Dissertation Title: "Adapting to Dixie: The Southernization of Nineteenth Century Lutherans in the North Carolina Piedmont" Advisor: Cynthia Lyerly Position: History Teacher, Newton Country Day School |
Llana Barber | Dissertation Title: "Latino Migration and the New Global Cities: Transnationalism, Race, and Urban Crisis in Lawrence, Massachusetts, 1945-2000" Advisors: Marilynn Johnson; Davarian Baldwin Position: Assistant Professor, SUNY Old Westbury (tenure track) |
Jill Bender | Dissertation Title: "Fears of 1857: The British Empire in the Wake of the Indian Rebellion" Advisor: Prasannan Parthasarathi Position: Assistant Professor, University of North Carolina Greensboro (tenure track) |
Amanda Bidnall | Dissertation Title: “‘The Birth Pangs of a New Nation:’ West Indian Artists in London, 1945-1965” Advisor: Peter Weiler Position: Instructor, Simon Fraser University |
Christina Brophy | Dissertation Title: "Keening Community: Mná Caointe, Women, Death, and Power in Ireland" Advisor: Kevin O'Neill Position: Instructor, Triton College |
John Dennehy | Dissertation Title: "James Sullivan and the Birth of Massachusetts Republicanism" Advisor: Alan Rogers |
Meaghan Dwyer-Ryan | Dissertation Title: "Ethnic Patriotism: Boston's Irish and Jewish Communities, 1880-1929" Advisor: Kevin Kenny Position: Assistant Professor, University of South Carolina Aiken (tenure track) |
Gregory Walsh | Dissertation Title: "Splintered Loyalties: The Revolutionary War in Essex County, New Jersey" Advisor: Alan Rogers |
Selected Earlier Graduates
Alexander Bloom | Chair and Professor of History, Wheaton College |
William Chase | Chair and Professor of History, University of Pittsburgh |
Michael B. Friedland | History Teacher, Seattle Urban Academy |
Arch Getty | Professor, University of California at Los Angeles |
Richard Immerman | Chair and Professor of History, Temple University |
Violet Johnson | Chair and Professor of History, Agnes Scott College |
| Published: The Other Black Bostonians: West Indians in Boston, 1900-1950 | |
Sheryl Kujawa-Holbrook | Professor of Practical Theology and Religious Education, Claremont School of Theology |
Mark O’Connor | Director, Honors Program, Boston College |
James O’Toole | Professor, Boston College |
Susan Vorderer | Associate Professor & Chair of History Department, Merrimack College |