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Alumni
Alumni Spotlight
Associate Professor, The College of Saint Benedict and Saint John's University
Ph.D Department of History, 2016, supervisor Fraser Ottanelli
Dr. Alena Pirok
Assistant Professor of History, SUNY-Cortland
Ph.D. Department of History, 2017, supervisor Philip Levy
Assistant Professor of History, Randolph-Macon College
Ph.D. Department of History, 2023, supervisor Davide Tanasi
Lecturer, Coastal Carolina University
PhD. Department of History, 2022. supervisor Julia Irwin
Dr. Chelsea Watts
Associate Professor of Humanities, College of Central Florida
PhD. Department of History, 2016. supervisor David Johnson
Associate Director for Fellowships, Folger Shakespeare Library
PhD. Department of History, 2018. supervisor Giovanna Benadusi
Theses and dissertations (last 5 years)
View and download manuscripts from Scholar Commons
2025
Paula Pack (PhD)
Professor: Brian Connolly
Title: Healthy Bodies, Moral Minds, and Rural Ideals: Contextualizing Interwar British Childhood
and Citizenship Through Children's Country Holidays Fund Vacations
Douglas Ponticos (PhD)
Professor: Brian Connolly
Title: Springscape: The Nature Coast and the Making of Modern Florida, 1820s-Present
Michael Strawbridge (PhD)
Professor: Matthew King
Title: The Book of the Promises and Prophecies of God by Bishop Quodvultdeus of Carthage:
A Translation with Critical Introduction and Commentary
Kevin Youngberg (PhD)
Professor: Brian Connolly
Title: Beyond the Gray Ghost: John S. Mosby and the Power of Legend
Donald Zimmerman (PhD)
Professor: Erin Mauldin
Title: Broken Brotherhood: Freemasonry in Jim Crow Florida, 1880-1930
Rachel Stanton (MA)
Professor: Kees Boterbloem
Title: From Russia with Love: The Transposal of Hunger Strikes from Russia to Britain in
the Late Nineteenth and Early twentieth Centuries
2024
Christopher Adkins (PhD)
Professor: Brian Connolly
Title: A Republic of Pawprints The Rise and Reign of the Alaskan Sled Dog, 1870-1970
Scott Miller (PhD)
Professor: David Johnson
Title: The Friendship Train: Peas, Politics, and Propaganda
Sofia Almeida (MA)
Professor: Philip Levy
Title: "A Historic Place of Peace and Reflection": A Critical Analysis of Digital Methods
in the Recovery of Forgotten Black Cemeteries
Sara White (MA)
Professor: Philip Levy
Title: “She’s on Her Way Up”: A Case Study of Mercy Otis Warren and the Gendered Politics
of Commemoration
Sarah Whiting (MA)
Professor: Philip Levy
Title: “Even the Birds Got More Out of Her Than I Did”: Wrecking and Constructive Memory
in Key West, Florida
2023
Stephan Hassam (PhD)
Professor: Davide Tanasi
Title: Visualizing Empire: Advancing Roman Archaeology in Sicily and Malta through 3D Digitization
and Spatial Technologies
Kaitlyn Kingsland (PhD)
Professor: Davide Tanasi
Title: Archaeogaming and the Re-Use of Digital Archaeological Materials:
Generating Serious Games for the Villas of Roman Sicily
Bishoy Garis (PhD)
Professor: Matthew King
Title: A Church of the People: Coptic Church Building and Direction in Central New Jersey
Jason Old (PhD)
Professor: Adriana Novoa
Title: The Politics of Waves: A Transnational and Cultural Surfing History of Popoyo, Nicaragua
Michael Swierczynski (PhD)
Professor: Kees Boterbloem
Title: Proud and Mischievous Designs Elizabethan Propaganda of the Dutch Revolt
Patrick Green (MA)
Professor: Kees Boterbloem
Title: Bookends: Freemasonry in Russia, Past and Present
Alissa Roy (MA)
Professor: Philip Levy
Title: "Emerging and Submerging": Silence, Commemoration, and Sexual Violence in Minneapolis
Connor Lasseter (MA)
Professor: David Johnson
Title: The Sun Shines on Us, Too: Bobby Smith and Tampa's Early LGBTQ Community
Reagan Vernon (MA)
Professor: Matthew King
Title: Against God, Good Faith, and Reason: The 1381 Peasants’ Revolt in Cambridge
2022
Charles Harris (PhD)
Professor: Julia Irwin
Title: 'Surest Guarantee of Peace': Rhetoric, Consumer Culture, and the Popularization of
American Naval Power, 1883-1909
Hannah Lipsey (PhD)
Professor: Julia Irwin
Title: American Horse Power during the Great War
Michael LoSasso (PhD)
Professor: David Johnson
Title: “Good War” on the Cool Medium: The Cold War's Influence on the Portrayal of World
War II on American Television
Tamala Malerk (PhD)
Professor: Kees Boterbloem
Title: Worthy of Emulation: Mira Behn and Indian Independence, 1925-1959
Alaina Scapicchio (MA)
Professor: Philip Levy
Title: "Memories Rescued from the Mire of Oblivion": The 1885 Rebecca Nurse Monument and
Salem Witch Trails Commemoration
2021
Shannon Bruffett (PhD)
Professor: K. Stephen Prince
Title: Diaspora by Design: The Systematic Displacement of Tampa's African American Populace,
1925-1974
Christina Csensich (PhD)
Professor: Darcie Fontaine
Title: Consumerism and Pride: The Fate of Paris' Marais Gayborhood
Paul Dunder (PhD)
Professor: K. Stephen Prince
Title: Baseball, with a Southern Accent: The Urban Game in the Post-Reconstruction South
Sean Krummerich (PhD)
Professor: Golfo Alexopoulos
Title: Für Kaiser und Heimat: Svetozar Boroević, South Slav Habsburg Nationalism, and the
First World War
Sofia Paschero (MA)
Professor: K. Stephen Prince
Title: The DREAM Act and DACA: A History of Immigrant Children
Ashley Wessel (MA)
Professor: Giovanna Benadusi
Title: Jane Anger Her Protection for Women and the Emergence of a Radical Female Voice in
Late Sixteenth Century England
2020
Christina Hotalen (PhD)
Professor: Julie Langford
Title: Embodying the Empire: Imperial Women and the Evolution of Succession Ideologies in
the Third Century
Arwen Puteri (PhD)
Professor: Kees Boterbloem
Title: The West knows Best: East Germans left behind after Unification
Aaron Lewis (PhD)
Professor: K. Stephen Prince
Title: The Confederate Triumvirate: Stonewall Jackson, Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis, and
the Making of the Lost Cause, 1863-1940
Sahir Hismiogullari (MA)
Professor: Davide Tanasi
Title: An Analytical Approach to Information and Communication Technologies
Alexander Obermueller (MA)
Professor: David Johnson
Title: Between Soledad and Attica Brothers: the Raiford Protest and Prison Activism in Florida
Alumni Selected publications
Christopher David Adkins, “The Canine Crucible of Labor, Love, Killing, and Kindness of the Gold Rush North,” Alaska History, vol. 38, no. 2 (Fall 2023), pp. 67-98
Nicole C. Cox, "Damage Control and the 1921 Hurricane: Boosters, Businessmen and Bad Press," Tampa Bay History, Vol. 22, no. 1 (2008), 1-18.
Michael A. LoSasso, The Unknown War of the Eastern Front: The First American-Soviet Television Production and Détente’s Word War II,” Historical Journal of Film, Radio, and Television, vol. 42, no. 4 (2022), pp. 823-840.
Stratton D. Nauman, “The Metropolitan Community Church Goes to Denny’s: Religion, Bar Culture, and the Origins of LGBT Activism in Tampa,” Tampa Bay History, Vol. 28, (2014).
Alena Pirok, “Specters of the Mythic South: How Plantation Fiction Fixed Ghost Stories to Black Americans” Southern Cultures vol. 29., no 4 (Winter, 2023): 17-31
Alaina Scapicchio, “Living Memory in Los Angeles: Cornelius Johnson's 1936 Olympic Oak in Art, History, and Preservation; Christian Kosmas Mayer in Conversation with Alaina Scapicchio" in Branching Out: The Public History of Trees, eds. Leah S. Glaser and Philip Levy (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2025).
Jason Vickers, ““That Deep Kind of Discipline of Spirit”: Freedom, Power, Family, Marriage, and Sexuality in the Story of John Humphrey Noyes and the Oneida Community,” American Nineteenth Century History, vol. 14, no. 1 (2013), pp. 1-26
Kaitlyn Kingsland, "Comparative Analysis of Digital Photogrammetry Software for Cultural Heritage", Digital Applications in Archaeology and Cultural Heritage, 18 (2020), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.daach.2020.e00157
Stephan Hassam, "Post-Prehistoric pottery from the 1909 and 1959 excavations at Qlejgħa tal-Baħrija", in The Maltese Archipelago at the Dawn of History, eds. Davide Tanasi and David Cardona (Oxford: Archaeopress Publishing 2020, pp. 100-108.