PhD Placements

2024

William Holly
Dissertation: For the Benefit of the Mountain
Chair of Dissertation Committee: Julian Lim
Position: Teaching Assistant Professor of History, West Virginia University Institute of Technology

Tom Zoellner
Dissertation: Let My People Go
Chair of Dissertation Committee: Calvin Schermerhorn
Position: Professor of English, Chapman University

2020

Grace Hunt Watkinson
Dissertation: A Savage Land: Violence and Trauma in the Nineteenth Century American Southwest
Chair of Dissertation Committee: Donald Fixico
Position: Content and Curriculum Coordinator, State of Florida Archives

Mehmet Kasicki
Dissertation: Growing up Soviet in the Periphery: Imagining, Experiencing, and Remembering Childhood in Kazakhstan, 1920-1953
Chair of Dissertation Committee: Laurie Manchester
Position: Postdoctoral Fellow, Higher School for Economics in Moscow

2019

Bridget Groat 
Dissertation: The Changing Tides of Bristol Bay: Salmon, Sovereignty, and Bristol Bay Natives
Advisor: Donald Fixico
Position: Visiting Assistant Professor, Fort Lewis College

Tyler Kirk
Dissertation: Remembering the GULAG: Community, Identity and Cultural Memory in Russia's Far North, 1987-2010
Chairs of Dissertation Committee: Laurie Manchester, Mark Von Hagen
Position:  Assistant professor, University of Alaska

John Romero
Dissertation: Socialist in Form, National in Content: Soviet Culture in the Tatar Autonomous Republic, 1934-1968
Chairs of Dissertation Committee: Laurie Manchester, Mark Von Hagen
Position:  Assistant professor, University of North Georgia

2018

James Dupey
Dissertation: Cultivating the Domain: Alexander Campbell and Denomination Building in the Trans-Appalachian West, 1820-60
Advisor: Catherine O’Donnell
Position: Clinical Assistant Professor, Arizona State University

Morgan Hoodenpyle
Dissertation: Girlie Man: Space, Gender, and Race in Nightlife Performance in New York City, Chicago, and San Francisco, 1890-1945
Advisor: Gayle Escobar
Position: Associate Professor, Mt. San Jacinto College

Judith Perera
Dissertation: From Exclusion to State Violence: The Transformation of Immigrant Detention in the United States
Advisor: J. Calvin Schermerhorn
Position: Faculty Associate, Arizona State University

2017

Benjamin Beresford
Dissertation: Stalin’s Jazz: Identity, Modernity, and Early Soviet Culture, 1928- 1953
Advisor: Mark Von Hagen
Position: Middle School Teacher, San Jose, CA

Linnea Caproni
Dissertation: Casas Montezumas: Chorographies, Ancient Ruins, and Placemaking in the Salt and Gila River Valleys, Arizona, 1694-1868
Advisor: Victoria Thompson
Position: Contract Historian

John A. Goodwin
Dissertation: "Without Destroying Ourselves": American Indian Intellectual Activism for Higher Education, 1915-1978
Advisor: Donald Fixico
Position: History Teacher, BASIS Phoenix

Andrea Field
Dissertation: After the Towers: The Destruction of Public Housing and the Remaking of Chicago
Advisor: Philip Vandermeer

2016

Aaron Byungjoo Bae
Dissertation: The Ideological Impetus and Struggle in Praxis for Multiracial Radical Alliances in the San Francisco Bay Area, 1967-1980
Advisor: Matthew Garcia
Position: Lecturer, Arizona State University

Rebecca Baird
Dissertation: ‘Where the Flower Children Gathered’: The Los Angeles Free Clinic, 1967-75
Advisor: Matthew Garcia
Position: Instructor, Porterville College 

Emily Lewis Butterfield
Dissertation: "The Patriot Blood of Our Fathers Runs Through Our Veins!": Revolutionary Heritage Rhetoric and the American Woman's Rights Movement, 1848-1890
Advisor: Brooks Simpson

Nathan Hallam
Dissertation: Agricultural Production, the Phoenix Metropolis, and the Postwar Suburban Landscape in Tempe, Arizona
Advisor: Phillip VanderMeer
Position: Senior Architectural Historian, ECORP Consulting, Inc.

Farina King
Dissertation: The Journey of Diné Students in the Four Directions: Navajo Educational Experiences in the 20th Century
Advisor: Don Fixico
Position: Assistant Professor, Northeastern State University

William Kiser
Dissertation: Alternative Slaveries and American Democracy: Indian Captivity and Mexican Peonage in the Civil War Era Southwest
Advisor: Don Fixico
Position: Assistant Professor, Texas A&M University-San Antonio

Paul Kuenker
Dissertation: In the Unlikely Event: Danger and the Transportation Revolution in America 
Advisor: Susan Gray
Position: Visiting Instructor of History, Fort Lewis College

Yan Mann
Dissertation: Contested Memory: Writing the Great Patriotic War's Official History During Khrushchev's Thaw
Advisors: Laurie Manchester and Mark Von Hagen 
Position: Clinical Assistant Professor of World War II Studies, Arizona State University

Evan Medley
Dissertation: Place, Power, and Memory at Fort Union National Monument
Advisor: Don Fixico
Position: Historical Analyst, Research Archives, Salt River Project


2015

Rebecca Andersen
Dissertation: Between Mountain and Lake: an Urban Mormon Country
Advisor: Susan Gray 

Position: Lecturer, Utah State University

Monika Bilka
Dissertation: Remaking a People, Restoring a Watershed: Klamath Tribal Empowerment through Natural Resource Management, 1960-2010
Advisor: Don Fixico
Position: Lead History Faculty, Chandler-Gilbert Community College

Zhidan Diana Duan
Dissertation: At the Edge of Mandalas: The Transformation of the China's Yunnan Borderlands in the 19th and 20th Century
Advisor: Stephen Mackinnon
Position: Assistant Professor, Brigham Young University

Hiu Yu Cheung
Dissertation: Sequence of Power: Ritual Controversy over the Zhaomu Sequence in Imperial Ancestral Rites in Song China (960-1279)
Advisor: Hoyt Tillman
Position: Assistant Professor, The Chinese University of Hong Kong

Victoria Jackson
Dissertation: Title IX and the Big Time: Women’s Intercollegiate Athletics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1950-1992
Advisor: Brooks Simpson
Position: Lecturer, Arizona State University

Edmund McCaffray
Dissertation: The Culture of Literate Power at Cluny, 910-1156 CE
Advisor: Monica Green
Position: Teaching Fellow, BASIS McLean School

Roger Meade
Dissertation: Discoveries and Collisions: The Atom, Los Alamos, and The Marshall Islands
Advisor: Philip Vandermeer

Joan Miller
Dissertation: Shared Tears: Navy Chaplains with Marines in Vietnam, 1962-1972
Advisor: James Rush
Position: Pastor, St. Matthew United Methodist Church, Mesa, AZ
 

Jean-Marie Stevens
Dissertation: Re-Shaping History with Nobility: Conservatives and the American Memory of the Vietnam War in the 1980s
Advisor: Kyle Longley 
Position: Instructor, Arizona State University

Brianna Theobald
Dissertation: “The Simplest Rules of Motherhood”: Settler Colonialism and the Regulation of American Indian Reproduction, 1910-1976
Advisor: Susan Gray
Position: Assistant Professor, University of Rochester

Sabrina Thomas
Dissertation: The Value of Dust: Policy, Citizenship, and Vietnam’s Amerasian Children
Advisor: Kyle Longley
Position: Assistant Professor, Wabash College

Thomas Walsh
Dissertation: The Public Face of History: The New Western History from the Academy to Southwestern History Museum Exhibits
Advisor: Eduardo Pagan & Richard Toon

Ashley Wiedenbeck
Dissertation: The Natural Mother: Motherhood, Patriarchy, and Power in the Seventeenth-Century England
Advisor: Retha Warnicke

2014

Erica Cottam
Dissertation: The Legend of Don Lorenzo Hubbell and the Sense of Place in Navajo Country
Advisor: Stephen Pyne
Position: Author

Kimberli Engel-Pearson
Dissertation: A State of Words: Writing about Arizona, 1912-2012
Advisor: Stephen Pyne & Paul Hirt 
Position: Editor/Historian

Jon Flashnick
Dissertation: "Blood is Thicker than Water": Anglo-American Rapprochement in the Mid-Nineteenth Century, 1823-1872
Advisor: R. Kyle Longley
Position: Digital Market Director, IB5K

Stephanie McBride-Schreiner
Dissertation: Medicalizing Childhood: Pediatrics, Public Health, and Children's Hospitals in Nineteenth-Century Paris and London
Advisor: Rachel Fuchs
Position: EdXchange Publication Manager

Chelsea Mead
Dissertation: Zeziikizit Kchinchinaabe: A Relational Understanding of Anishinaabemowin History
Advisor: Donald Fizco
Position: Assistant Professor, Minnesota State University

Andrew Reed
Dissertation: For One's Brothers: Daniil Avraamovich Khvol'son and the "Jewish Question" in Russia
Advisor: Stephen Batalden
Position: Assistant Professor, Brigham Young University

John Rosinbum
Dissertation: A Crisis Transformed: Refugees, Activists and Government Officials in the United States and Canada during the Central American Refugee Crisis
Advisors: Dirk Hoerder & Lynn Stoner
Position: Adjunct Faculty, Arizona State University & Teacher, BASIS Tucson

Kathryn Sweet
Dissertation: The Unwelcomed Traveler: England's Black Death and Hopi's Smallpox
Advisor: Donald Fixco
Position: Adjunct Faculty, Grand Canyon University

Peter Van Cleave
Dissertation: Revolt, Religion, and Dissent in the Dutch-American Atlantic: Francis Adrian van der Kemp's Pursuit of Civil and Religious Liberty
Advisors: Catherine O’Donnell
Position: Lecturer, Arizona State University

2013

Marco Cabrera Geserick
Dissertation: The Legacy of the Filibuster War: National Identity, Collective Memory, and Cultural Anti-Imperialism
Advisor: Lynn Stoner
Position: Instructor, High Point University

Blake Jones
Dissertation: A Battle for Righteousness: Jimmy Carter and Religious Nationalism
Advisor: Kyle Longley
Position: Adjunct Faculty, Ohio Valley University

Gregory Mangan
Dissertation: Entering Sacred Ground: Public History at the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum
Advisor: Jannelle Warren-Findley
Position: Manager, Digital Humanities, Wesleyan University

Joseph O'Connell
Advisor: Retha Warnicke

Matthew Parry
Dissertation: From Monsters to Patients: A History of Disability
Advisor: Rachel Fuchs

Meaghan (Heisinger) Siekman
Dissertation: Weaving a New Shared Authority: The Akwesasne Museum and Community Collaboration Preserving Cultural Heritage, 1970-2012
Advisor: Don Fixico
Position: Senior Researcher, New England Historic Genealogical Society

Rose Soza War Soldier
Dissertation: “to take positive and effective action”: Rupert Costo and the California Based American Indian Historical Society
Chair of Dissertation Committee: Peter Iverson and Don Fixico
Position: Assistant Professor Native American Studies, Ethnic Studies Department, California State University, Sacramento

2012 

Cody Ferguson
Dissertation: `This is our land, we have the right to be heard': Community-based Environmental Activism in the Late Twentieth Century
Advisor: Paul Hirt
Position: Community Planning Program Manager at Montana Department of Commerce

Benjamin J. Hruska
Dissertation: "Baptized by Saltwater": Acts of Remembrance and Commemoration Surrounding the USS Block Islands, CVE-21 & CVE-106
Advisor: Victoria Thompson
Position: Teacher, BASIS Mesa High School 

Carol Palmer
Dissertation: Re-imagining Surprise: The Evolution of a Twenty-First Century Boomburb, 1938-2010
Advisor: Jannelle Warren-Findley
Position: Historical Consultant, Palmer Research, LLC 

Kristin Youngbull
Dissertation: Brummett Echohawk: Chaticks-si-chaticks
Advisor: Donald Fixico and Peter Iverson
Position: Adjunct Instructor, Utah Valley University

Scott Walker
Dissertation: Making the Desert Bloom: whites and Mexicans in the agricultural development of the Salt River Valley, 1867-1930
Advisor: Francisco Rosales
Position: Director of Academic Technology, Helix Education 

2011

Dana Bennett
Dissertation: "Undismayed By Any Mere Man": Women Lawmakers and Tax Policy in Nevada, 1919-1956
Advisor: Susan Gray
Position: President, Nevada Mining Association & Independent Mining Historian

Patricia Biggs
Dissertation: Tangled Truths: The Power of Worldviews, Memories, and Material Interests in NAGPRA Disputes, 1990-2010
Advisor: Don Fixico
Position: Park Ranger Historian, National Park Service Manzanar National Historic Site

Judith Comer-Schultz
Dissertation: History and Historic Preservation in San Diego Since 1945: Civic Identity in America's Finest City
Advisor: Philip Vandermeer
Position: Lecturer, Arizona State University

Jaimee Gruring
Dissertation: Dirty Laundry: Public Hygiene and Public Space in Nineteenth-Century Paris
Advisor: Rachel Fuchs

Jill Horohoe
Dissertation: First Ladies as Modern Celebrities: Politics and the Press in Progressive Era America
Advisor: Gayle Escobar
Position: Instructor, Arizona State University

Daniel Kiloren
Dissertation: American Indian Water Rights in Arizona: From Conflict to Settlement, 1950-2004
Advisor: Dirk Hoerder
Position: Research Analyst, Salt River Project 

Matthew Laubacher
Dissertation: Cultures of Collection in Late Nineteenth Century American Natural History
Advisor: Monica Green
Position: Associate Professor, Ashford University

Jedediah Rogers
Dissertation: Make Straight in the Desert a Highway: Ideology and Environmental Conflict on the Colorado Plateau
Advisor: Paul Hirt
Position: State Historian, Utah Division of State History

William Stoutamire
Dissertation: Creating the Monuments: Exploiting, Owning, and Protecting the Past in Flagstaff, Arizona
Advisor: Janelle Warren-Findley
Position: Frank House Museum Director, University of Nebraska

Adam Tompkins
Dissertation: Ghostworkers and Greens: Collaborative Engagements in Pesticide Reform, 1962-2011
Advisor: Paul Hirt
Position: Assistant Professor, Lakeland College (Japan)

2010

Brian Cassity
Dissertation: Health, sanitation, hygiene, and welfare: Public policy in the age of the Mexican Revolution
Advisor: Arturo Rosales
Position: Associate Professor, Kapiolani Community College (Hawaii)

Matthew Garrett
Dissertation: Mormons, Indians and Lamanites: The Indian Student Placement Program, 1947-2000
Advisor: Don Fixico
Position: Assistant Professor, Bakersfield College

Sarah Gerke
Dissertation: A History of National Park Service Interpretation at Grand Canyon National Park
Advisor: Paul Hirt
Position: Project Manager, Wass Gerke and Associates

Clara Keyt
Dissertation: A place called home: Place, culture, and politics in three communities near Superfund sites
Advisor: Don Fixico
Position: Instructor, Colorado State University

James McComb
Dissertation: “Foreign Affairs” on German affairs, 1922-1989
Advisor: Roger Adelson
Position: Adjunct Faculty, Irvine Community College

Patricia Roeser
Dissertation: Bunker Hill Monument in memory and rhetoric
Advisor: Jannelle Warren-Findley
Position: Records Administrator, Archdiocese of Corpus Christi

Stephanie Stegman
Dissertation: Taking control: Fifty years of diabetes in the American Southwest 1940-1990
Advisor: Monica Green
Position: Adjunct Professor, Texas Wesleyan University

2009

Elise Boxer
Dissertation: “To become white and delightsome:” American Indians and Mormon identity
Position: Assistant Professor of History and American Indian Studies, University of South Dakota 

Kara Carroll
Dissertation: Coming to grips with America: The Japanese American experience in the Southwest
Advisor: Peter Iverson
Position: Instructor, Central New Mexico Community College

Michael Casavantes
Dissertation: Polishing the jewel: The “Arizona Republic” and the growth and development of Phoenix, 1920–1958
Advisor: Philip VanderMeer
Position: Lecturer, Arizona State University

Elyssa Ford
Dissertation: Race, gender, and cultural identity in the American rodeo
Advisor: Matthew Whitaker
Position: Assistant Professor, Northwest Missouri State University

Diana Meneses
Dissertation: “It is what holds us together as a people”: A history of the Ak -Chin Indian Community
Advisor: Peter Iverson
Position: Independent Consultant/Ethnographer, SmartRevenue

Susan Schmid
Dissertation: Anne Boleyn, Lancelot de Carle, and the uses of documentary evidence
Advisor: Retha Warnick
Position: Manuscript Editor

Tamrala Swafford
Dissertation: The gadu:gi spirit: Community development strategies among the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, 1934 to 1984
Advisor: Don Fixico
Position: Instructor, American Military University

2008

Mark Ashurst-McGee
Dissertation: Zion rising: Joseph Smith's early social and political thought
Advisor: Brooks Simpson & Richard Lyman Bushman
Position: Historian, Corporation of the President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints

Michelle Benavides
Dissertation: Smokeless Factories: The decentering of U.S. legal and moral boundaries by Mexico's transnational divorce industry, 1923-1970
Advisor: Lynne Stoner

Patricia Blaine
Dissertation: “I had to come here for my family:” Mexican migrant deaths in the Arizona desert, 1990–2005
Advisor: Peter Iverson
Position: Chair, Department of History & Philosophy, South Texas College 

Monica Butler
Dissertation: Check your local listings: Indigenous representation in television
Advisor: Peter Iverson
Position: Professor, Seminole State College of Florida

Shawn England
Dissertation: The curse of Huitzilopochtli: The origins, process, and legacy of Mexico's military reforms, 1920–1946
Advisors: Asuncion Lavrin & F. Arturo Rosales
Position: Professor, Mount Royal University, Calgary

Bradley Gills
Dissertation: The Anishnabeg and the landscape of assimilation in Michigan, 1854–1934
Advisor: Susan Gray
Position: Research, Tribal Claims, History Research Associates, Inc.

Richard S. Hopkins, Jr.
Dissertation: Engineering nature: Public greenspaces in nineteenth-century Paris
Advisor: Rachel Fuchs
Position: Assistant Professor, Widener University

Stephanie Molholt
Dissertation: A buck well spent: Representations of American Indians in print advertising since 1890
Advisor: Brooks Simpson
Position: History Faculty, Community College of Baltimore County

Azusa Ono
Dissertation: Crossroads of Indian country: Native American community in Denver, 1950–2005
Advisor: Don Fixico
Position: Assistant Professor, Osaka University of Economics

Brock Ruggles
Dissertation: Not so quiet on the Western front: Punk politics during the conservative ascendancy in the United States, 1980–2000
Advisor: Kyle Longley
Position: Instructor, Arizona State University 

Tara Wood
Dissertation: “To the most godlye, virtuos, and mightye princes Elizabeth”: Identity and gender in the dedications to Elizabeth I
Advisor: Retha Warnicke
Position: Assistant Professor, Ball State University