By Professor Thomas Devaney
It has been some time since the last update, and our graduate students have been very busy. While I won’t be able to include nearly all of their accomplishments in the short space available here, hopefully I’ll be able to give a sense of what’s been happening. First, though, I should mention the new members of our community as well as those who have moved on to new adventures.
Over the past couple of years, we’ve welcomed Claire Becker, Lizzy Carr, Hannah Chhibber, Katelyn Getchel, Beom Mo Koo, Daniel McDermott, Sarabeth Rambold, and Kevin Sapere to the PhD program. Their interests include twentieth-century environmental movements, the history of museums, early modern religious women, and much more.
At the same time, several of our students have recently completed and defended their dissertations. Among them are Jim Rankine, whose project is titled "Shaving Blackbeard: Reappraising Pirates and Piracy in the Early Modern Atlantic, 1660-1700," Michelle Furlano, who wrote about "Historical Activism: Commemorating Frederick Douglass and Susan B. Anthony in Rochester, NY, 1929-1955," and, most recently, Carrie Knight, who successfully defended "Letters to Herself: Women and Individuality in Nineteenth-Century America."
Meanwhile, several of our recent graduates have found exciting new job opportunities. Camden Burd, for instance, is now an assistant professor of history at Eastern Illinois University. Laura Sikes is at Texas A&M University-Texarkana, Andrew Kless at Alfred University, where he is director of the global studies program and assistant professor of history and global studies, Rohma Khan is a Leading Edge Fellow with the American Council of Learned Societies, and Tucker Million is an upper school history teacher at The Hammond School in Columbia, SC. Katrina Ponti, who will be defending her dissertation soon, has already been offered and accepted an Ernest May Postdoctoral Fellowship at Harvard’s Belfer Center.
These successes point to the ways in which our students have been contributing to ongoing intellectual debates and increasing the visibility of our department. Andrew Russo, for instance, recently published "The North Atlantic in Islamic Cartographic Imageries" in a special issue of the journal Viator and Shellie Clark’s article "Love, Letters, and the Institutions of Gender and Marriage in the Nineteenth Century: The Marriage of William Henry and Frances Seward" was included in the New York History Journal in its Suffrage Centennial Special Issue.
Marcia Esteves Agostinho had a pair of articles appear: "Race Relations in Brazilian Comics of the Old Republic," in a special issue on comics and graphic novels in the journal Paradoxa; and "What Difference Gender Makes: Obstetricians in Nineteenth-Century Brazil," in the journal Histories. Both articles began as papers written for courses here in Rochester. Finally, Kevin Sapere published an op-ed in the Washington Post, "Covid-19 has made housework more visible, but it still isn’t valued." This piece is an example of our program’s new emphasis on reaching broader audiences.
Given all these accomplishments, it should come as no surprise that our students have received a number of prestigious awards and fellowships. Two of our students, Katrina Ponti and Andrew Russo, are currently on residential Fulbright fellowships, Katrina in Canada and Andrew in Morocco & Spain.
Dan Gorman Jr. won the Biosophical Institute's Frederick Kettner Scholarship, which supports projects that address the synthesis of science and religion, spiritual development or inner peace, or topics related to ethics and peace. Carrie Knight is a finalist for the Presidential Management Fellowship, a two-year training and leadership development program organized by the US Office of Personnel Management. This means she is now eligible to seek placement at a federal agency. And Marissa Crannell-Ash was awarded the 2022 Hal Rothman Dissertation Fellowship by the American Society for Environmental History.
Within the University, Marianne Kupin-Lisbin was awarded the Susan B. Anthony Dissertation Award and the 2022 Edward Peck Curtis Award for Excellence in Teaching by a Graduate Student. She was also selected for the Rochester Area Colleges Continuing Education Committee's Outstanding Adult Student Award for 2022. This prize recognizes success in college study while juggling other adult responsibilities such as family, job, career, and community service.
Marianne is far from alone in receiving recognition for her work. Alice Wynd was the recipient of the 2021 University of Rochester Edward Peck Curtis Award for Excellence in Teaching by a Graduate Student. Josie Bready and Marissa Crannell-Ash received Mellon Fellowships in the Digital Humanities. Alyssa Rodriguez was awarded a University of Rochester Dean's Dissertation Fellowship for the 2022-23 academic year and Claire Becker won the "Best Poster" award in the humanities division at the University of Rochester AS&E Graduate Research Symposium.
This is only the tip of the iceberg—please see our graduate student news section in this newsletter each month to read even more about our students' accomplishments. Congratulations to all!