Graduate Students
Rafael studies 18th-century American history. His research focuses on plantation slavery in colonial America and the Early Republic. He is particularly interested in the consumption, production and trade of psychoactive substances like alcohol, nicotine, caffeine and sugar within the plantation complex.
Jared studies American legal history and political economy. His research focuses on the rise of corporate capitalism in the late 19th century and, in particular, the ideological origins of corporate personhood.
Inna studies Middle East and Russian history and is particularly interested in the social and legal history of the North Caucasus Muslims. She plans to focus her research on Islamic law and legal courts in 20th-century Dagestan while examining the gap between the written law and the law in action.
Robert studies imperial and colonial history, with particular emphases on the modern British Empire and the Caribbean. His research focuses on the interactions between colonizer and colonized, particularly as seen in the experiences of East Indian indentured laborers throughout the British Empire.
Sarah Beth studies the American Revolution in New England, with specific interests in the concept of neutrality in war, civilian experience in war and the redistribution of wealth in New England communities after the expulsion of loyalists. Side interests include literary culture and literature produced during wartime, collaboration in war and war-related reprisals.
Lauren studies U.S. immigration law and policy in the 20th century with a focus on the legal admission, exclusion and deportation of women. Lauren is currently at work on her dissertation, “Immigration, Sexuality, and the Law, 1876-1924,” which examines issues of gender, sexuality, race and state power in the application of immigration law.
Kerry Jo studies 19th-century American women and their experiences and conceptions of motherhood. She is interested in comparative analyses of women's experiences across cultures in the nineteenth century, and is dedicated to the fields of historical pedagogy and public history. She is the co-leader of the Mandel Center for the Humanities reading group "Developing Your Teaching Persona" and has served as a graduate department representative.
Alexander studies the culture and politics of the late Soviet Union, with special emphasis on youth culture, environmental activism, and radical politics. His research focuses on how a particular engineering project facilitated the expansion of generational, ideological and civic discourse to realms that fundamentally questioned Soviet men's and women’s conception of self and security in the late state-socialist cultural capital.
Fangchao studies Chinese history and Southeast Asian history. His research focuses on the history of overseas Chinese communities under British and Dutch colonial governances in the Java Sea region in the 18th and 19th centuries. His research interests include European imperial history in East and Southeast Asia, Chinese maritime expansions, and global maritime trade in the early modern period.
Hannah studies 19th- and 20th-century women's history in the United States. She is particularly interested in how women negotiate roles of authority in religious traditions.
Ali studies 19th-century American history and the history of medicine. Her research examines the ways in which medicine and ideas about health interact with social and cultural values. Her dissertation-in-progress is "Home and Hospital: The Civil War Origins of Veteran Health Care in America."
Bridget studies the history of race and racism and the modern United States, focusing on institutions, the development of the modern state, and how marginalized peoples engage with activism and intellectual production from intersectional identities. Her research centers around various forms of racism in the northern United States during the 20th century.
Susann studies modern European history, more specifically the post-World War II period. Her research focuses on the role of education and history textbooks in the development of national identity.
Joey studies early modern Europe and Asia, particularly France and Ming-Qing China, with a focus on state formation and social and cultural history. His research interests include global frontier-state interactions, gunpowder technology and socioeconomic patterns in global history.
Alaa studies the modern history of the Middle East. Her current research focuses on the transition away from traditional Islamic historiography in the 19th-century Levant and the historiography of the nahḍa in relation to historical fiction.
Caitlin studies modern European history, the North American West, and women, gender, and sexuality studies. Her research focuses on women's land rights during the great Scandinavian migration to the United States in the 19th century. She is particularly interested in the importance of land in practice, partnership, ownership and inheritance for Norwegian immigrant women who were part of the agricultural economy of the southern Minnesota plains.
Elizabeth studies 20th-century African American history. Her research focuses on the social and political impacts of World War II and the immediate post-World War II era on the actions and ideologies of the Civil Rights Movement.
Caleb studies 20th century United States political history. His work concentrates on how Black Americans in the northern U.S. conceptualized, practiced, and expanded multiracial democracy from the post-New Negro movement of the 1930s through the Civil Rights Movement to the aftermath of the Black Power Movement of the 1980s. His current dissertation research focuses on Chicago, Black politics, and neoliberalism during the 1940s to 1990s.
Calvin studies modern United States history. His research probes the murky relationship between illicit economies and state power in the 19th and 20th centuries. He is at work on a dissertation called "Shadows of the State: A History of the Los Angeles Underworld, 1848-1950."
Alexandra M. studies 20th-century European history and is particularly interested in Jewish and Roma women’s history in the Holocaust with a specific focus on fertility events that translate to sexual violence. She plans to focus her research on understanding women's experiences with sterilization, abortion and infanticide. She is the recipient of the EHRI Kristel Fellowship 2021 and the inaugural Strauss Fellowship at Cedars-Sinai Center for Medicine, Holocaust and Genocide Studies. Alexandra has won the graduate research awards of the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute and of the Tauber Institute for the Study of European Jewry in 2022, as well as the 2019 early-career ISCH Essay Prize for Cultural Historians.
Joseph studies American Jewish history. His research interests include African American-Jewish relations and Southern Jewish history as well as broader questions about race and ethnicity in America, archival representation, and public-facing scholarship. He is currently working on a long-term project that seeks to reinterpret the relationship between Black and Jewish Southerners by introducing sources traditionally associated with African American history.
Joseph studies American environmental history with a focus on New England. His primary interest is in forestry and perceptions of the natural world, connecting his work to investigations of science, technology, and capitalism. He is also passionate about community-held knowledge of historical events and has recently conducted research on Eastern Wabanaki land management methods and plantation ecology in 17th- and 18th-century southeastern Rhode Island.
