Dissertations

Ideally within six months, but in some cases as much as a year after they receive the M.Phil., students submit a plan of research for the dissertation (the "prospectus") to a four-person faculty committee, which reads the document and meets with the student to suggest strategies for research and the overall design of the project. Once the prospectus has been formally approved by the committee, the student embarks on the final stage of the Ph.D.: the dissertation itself. Typically research, writing, and defense of a dissertation take two to four years.

Dissertations in Progress:

Africa

Student: Edey-Rhodes, Joanne
Advisor: Wright, Marcia
Dissertation title: "African American Interest in Black South Africa, 1898-1964"

Student: Tappan, Jennifer
Advisor: Wright, Marcia
Dissertation title: "A Healthy Child Comes from a Healthy Mother: Mwanamugimu and Nutritional Science in Uganda, 1935-73"

Ancient

Student: Carrier, Richard
Advisor: Harris, William V.
Dissertation title: "Attitudes toward the Physikos (Natural Philosopher) and His Activity in the Early Roman Empire (100 B.C.-313 A.D.)"

Student: Governale, Jason
Advisor: Harris, William V.
Dissertation title: "Hostes Gentium: A Social and Economic History of Piracy in the Ancient Mediterranean"

Student: Jensen, Erik
Advisor: Harris, William
Dissertation title: "Roman Metalwork in the North and the Crossing of Borders"

Student: O'Connor, Stephen
Advisor: Harris, William V.
Dissertation title: "Armies, Navies, and Economies in the Greek World in the Fifth and Fourth Centuries B.C."

Student: Terpstra, Taco
Advisor: Harris, William
Dissertation title: "Roman Law and the Roman Economy: An Institutional Economics Perspective"

Early Modern Europe

Student: Baurkot, Samuel
Advisor: Berghahn, Volker
Dissertation title: "Kurt Birrenbach and the Evolution of German Atlanticism, 1945-76"

Student: De Luca, Kelly
Advisor: Howell, Martha
Dissertation title: "Beyond the Sea: Territorial Fiction and English Law, c. 1580-c. 1630"

Student: Dosemeci, Mehmet
Advisor: Berghahn, Volker
Dissertation title: "Reflecting Contradiction: Imagining Europe and Turkey through the Turkish-EU Dialogue"

Student: Jones, Ryan
Advisor: Armitage, David
Dissertation title: "Conserving the Empire: Natural History, Commerce, and Environmental Change in the North Pacific, 1742-99"

Student: Schaefer, Sagi
Advisor: Berghahn, Volker
Dissertation title: The Boundries of Rural Identification: The German-German Border and the Transitions of Provincial Society, 1939-1961

Student: von Ostenfeld, Kira
Advisor: Howell, Martha
Dissertation title: Official Historiography,Political Legitimacy, and Royal Authority in Spain under Phillip II, 1560-1599

Student: Williams, Megan
Advisor: Howell, Martha
Dissertation title: "Totus Mundus Interim Revolvitur: Central European Diplomacy in an Era of Dynastic Rivalry, 1526-59"

East Asia

Student: Augustine, Matthew
Advisor: Gluck, Carol
Dissertation title: "Migrations, Diasporas, and the Evolving Boundaries of the Japanese From Wartime Empire through the American Occupation, 1941-1952"

Student: Chen, Li
Advisor: Zelin, Madeleine
Dissertation title: "Discourse of the Rule of Law in Late Qing China: A Legal Transaction between Tradition and Modernity, 1861-1911"

Student: Clulow, Adam
Advisor: Gluck, Carol
Dissertation title: "Exporting Violence: Japanese Mercenaries in Southeast Asia in the 17th Century"

Student: Coleman, William
Advisor: Zelin, Madeleine
Dissertation title: "Between Empires: Power in Khams History, 1860-1949"

Student: Cook, Alexander C.
Advisor:
Dissertation title: "Unsettling Accounts: The Trial of the Gang of Four and the Cultural Logic of Late Socialism in China, 1978-83"

Student: Dudley, Jesse
Advisor:
Dissertation title: "History Writing and Modernity: Historiography and Local History Writing in China, 1900-48"

Student: Hofmann, Reto
Advisor: Gluck, Carol
Dissertation title: The Quest for a New Order: Empire and Fascism in Interwar Japan and Italy

Student: Jaundrill, D. Colin
Advisor: Gluck, Carol
Dissertation title: "The Culture of Military Service in Imperial Japan"

Student: Kim, Charles R.
Advisor:
Dissertation title: "The Making of South Korea's First Generation"

Student: McGill, Ellen
Advisor:
Dissertation title: "Qing Colonization of Inner Mongolia"

Student: Park, Alyssa
Advisor: Armstrong, Charles K.
Dissertation title: "Locating a Korean National Identity in the Borderland: Koreans in Northern Korea and the Russian Far East, 1860-1937"

Student: Tian, Huan
Advisor: Zelin, Madeleine
Dissertation title: Governing Imperial Borders: Insights from the Study of the Implementation of Law in Qing Xinjiang

Student: Weiner, Benno
Advisor: Tuttle, Gray

Dissertation title: The Chinese Cultiral Revolution on the Tibetan Frontier: Fragmentation, Integration and State Building on the Margins of Maoist China.

Student: Wice, Leila
Advisor:
Dissertation title: "Dress Codes: Breaking Rules and Making Meanings in Japan, 1590-1890"

International and Global History

Student: Schade, Abigail
Advisor: Bulliet, Richard
Dissertation title: “Water, Space, and Time: A Global History of Qanat Irrigation Technologies in Arid Enviroments, with Evidence from Iran, the Western Desert of Egypt, and the Balearic Islands of Spain”

Student: Webel, Mari
Advisor: Stepan, Nancy
Dissertation title: Locating the Laboratory: Tropical Medicine, German Imperialism, and Robert Koch’s Sleeping Sickness Research in the Lake Victoria Region, 1898-1914

Jewish History

Student: Friedman, Michal
Advisor: Yerushalmi, Yosef Hayim
Dissertation title: "Recovering 'Jewish Spain': Sephardic Studies in the Spanish Political and Cultural Landscape, 1845-1992"

Student: Gribetz, Jonathan
Advisor: Stanislawski, Michael F.
Dissertation title: Mutual Understanding among Zionists and Arabs in Late Ottoman Palestine.

Student: Horowitz, David
Advisor: Stanislawski, Michael F.
Dissertation title: "Social Change and Social Control in the German Jewish Community of Hambrg-Altona-Wandsbek, 1620-1812"

Student: Klein, Frederick
Advisor: Stanislawski, Michael F.
Dissertation title: "Rabbis and Maskilim: The Galician Haskalah as an Alternative Religious Ideology, 1800-65"

Student: Levi, Yael
Advisor: Stanislawski, Michael F.
Dissertation title: "Rabbi Jacob Halevi Lipschitz and Eastern European Jewry’s Orthodox Response to Modernity"

Student: Siegman, Dafna
Advisor: Yerushalmi, Yosef Hayim
Dissertation title: "Exegesis, Exile, and Eschatology: Commentaries to the Book of Esther in the Wake of the Spanish Expulsion"

Student: Wachtel, David
Advisor: Stanislawski, Michael F.
Dissertation title: Alexander Marx and the Formation of the Great American Libraries of Judaica: 1903-1953.

Latin America

Student: Basualdo, Victoria
Advisor: Klein, Herbert S.
Dissertation title: "Deindustrialization and Labor: Argentine Industrial Workers and Structural Change, 1976-2001"

Student: Rath, Thomas
Advisor: Piccato, Pablo
Dissertation title: "Unpicking "Mexico Bronco", Army, State Repression, and Politcal Order in Modern Mexico, 1940-1970"

Student: Zazueta, Pilar
Advisor: Piccato, Pablo
Dissertation title: "Better than Water: Milk, Soft Drinks, and the Politics of Food in Mexico, 1947-86"

Medieval Europe

Student: Hadbavny, Lee
Advisor: Kaye, Joel
Dissertation title: "Warriors, Healers, and Pastors: Hospitallers and Templars in England and Northern France, c. 1095-c. 1291"

Student: Jachiet, Alain
Advisor: Kosto, Adam
Dissertation title: Crusading Policy in the Age of Innocent III, 1198-1216

Student: Monroe, William
Advisor: Somerville, Robert
Dissertation title: "The Trial and Rehabilitation of Pope Formosus"

Student: Moore, William
Advisor: Kosto, Adam
Dissertation title: "The Use of Religious Language in the Construction of Royal Power: Leon-Castile, 1037-1157"

Student: Schoenig, Steven
Advisor: Somerville, Robert
Dissertation title: "The Pallium, the Papacy, and the Latin Church, 800-1200"

Middle East

Student: Fiske, George
Advisor: Bulliet, Richard
Dissertation title: "Unraveling the Sultanic Robe: Studies of the 4th-6th Islamic Centuries"

Student: Umit, Devrim
Advisor: Bulliet, Richard
Dissertation title: "American Missionary Enterprise in Ottoman Anatolia, 1876-1923"

Student: White, Samuel
Advisor: Bulliet, Richard
Dissertation title: Crisis, Climate, and Ecology in the Ottoman Near East

Student: Wick, Alexis
Advisor: Bulliet, Richard
Dissertation title: The Ottoman Red Sea and It’s World, 1770-1869

Modern Europe

Student: Alvarado-Diaz, Alheli
Advisor: Moyn, Samuel
Dissertation title: "Between New Political Critique and the Reinvention of Revolutionary Thought: From Socialisme of Barbarie to l'esprit soixante-huitard, 1946-68"

Student: Antonov, Sergei
Advisor: Wortman, Richard
Dissertation Title: "Law and the Culture of Debt, Credit, and Insolvancy in Imperial Russia, 1832-1917"

Student: Bertschi, Curtis
Advisor: De Grazia, Victoria
Dissertation title: "Representing the Automobile: Renault, the State, and the Promotion of Motorization in France, 1945-75"

Student: Boucher, Ellen
Advisor: Pedersen, Susan
Dissertation title: "An Imperial Investment: British Child Emigration to Southern Rhodesia and Australia, 1900-67"

Student: Dos Santos, George
Advisor: De Grazia, Victoria
Dissertation title: "'We Understand the Negroes!' Colonial Theory and the Crusading Myth in the Portuguese New State, 1926-74"

Student: Doyno, Mary
Advisor: Bynum, Caroline W.
Dissertation title: "Lay Saints and Their Cults in Central and Northern Italian Cities, 1200-1400"

Student: Eichler, Jeremy
Advisor: Berghahn, Volker
Dissertation title: "Exile Beneath the Palms: Modernism and Music in Southern California 1933-1962

Student: Katzman, David
Advisor: Woloch, Isser
Dissertation title: "Transforming Power: The Workforce of Electricite de France in the Face of Changing Technology"

Student: Lowder, Leon
Advisor: Abrams, Bradley
Dissertation title: "The Socialist Lifestyle: The Bulgarian Middle Class in the Age of Zhivkov, 1956-89"

Student: Maksymiuk, Dan
Advisor: De Grazia, Victoria
Dissertation title: "International Intellectual Cooperation: The Cultural Politics of the League of Nations, 1918-39"

Student: McBurney, Elizabeth
Advisor: Wortman, Richard
Dissertation title: "Astride the Nation: Power and Propoganda in the Portrait Iconography of Catherine II"

Student: Medalis, Christopher
Advisor: von Hagen, Mark
Dissertation title: "The Fulbright Program and Its Impact on Higher Education Policy and Reform in Central and Eastern Europe since 1989"

Student: Pinsky, Anatoly
Advisor: von Hagen, Mark
Dissertation title: "Liberalizing the Russian Soul: Russian Intellectuals and the Fate of Liberal Nationalism, 1953-85"

Student: Vuletic, Dean
Advisor: Mazower, Mark
Dissertation title: A Star is Born: Cultural Politics, International Relations and Popular Music in Communist Yugoslavia

Student: Zonis, Nadia
Advisor: De Grazia, Victoria
Dissertation title: "The Next Rome: Modernity, the 'Economic Miracle' and the Olympic Games, 1955-60"

South Asia

Student: Balachandran,Aparna
Advisor: Dirks, Nicholas
Dissertation title: "Christ and the Pariah: Colonialism, Religion, and Outkasts in South India c. 1780-1830"

Student: Govind, Rahul
Advisor: Dirks, Nicholas
Dissertation title: "The Genetics of Political Economy and the East India Company Mutation"

United States

Student: Appel, Jacob
Advisor: Brinkley, Alan
Dissertation title: "Experts on Trial: Medical Evidence and Moral Culpability in New York City's Sensational Criminal Prosecutions, 1902-12"

Student: Berkowitz, Michael
Advisor: Brinkley, Alan
Dissertation title: "Time Off: Vacations, Tourism, and the Business of Leisure, 1900-45"

Student: Canedo, Eduardo
Advisor: Foner, Eric
Dissertation title: "The End of Regulation: The Movement to Deregulate the American Economy, 1974-84"

Student: Carter-Jackson, Kellie
Advisor: Foner, Eric
Dissertation title: Force and Freedom: Black Abolitionists and the Politics of Violence, 1850-1861.

Student: Coates, Benjamin
Advisor: Stephanson, Anders
Dissertation title: Trans-Atlantic Advocates: International Law and U.S. Foreign Relations, 1900-1920

Student: Cummings, Alexander
Advisor: Blackmar, Elizabeth
Dissertation title: Piracy and the Consolidation of Property Rights in Sound Recordings

Student: Decker, Jefferson
Advisor: Brinkley, Alan
Dissertation title: "The Conservative Legal Movement and American Government, 1971-87"

Student: Erickson, Ansley
Advisor: Blackmar, Elizabeth
Dissertation title: "Schooling the Sunbelt: A Politcal Economy of Education in Nashville, Tennessee, 1950-2000

Student: Field, Corrine
Advisor: Blackmar, Elizabeth
Dissertation title: "Women's Rights and the Politics of Aging, 1848-1939"

Student: Forcey, Charles
Advisor: Brinkley, Alan
Dissertation title: "Liberalism at the Gates of Hell: The Search for a New Public Philosophy after World War II"

Student: Fullilove, Courtney
Advisor: Foner, Eric
Dissertation title: "The U.S. Patent Office and the Development of Intellectual Property in the 19th Century"

Student: Hemmer, Nicole
Advisor: Brinkley, Alan
Dissertation title: Messangers of the Right: Media and the Modern American Conservative Movement

Student: Holm, April
Advisor: Foner, Eric
Dissertation title: The Civil War in the Mainstream Evangelical Churches, 1837-1894

Student: Kenner, Martin
Advisor: Brinkley, Alan
Dissertation title: "The Transition from the British to the American Financial Empire: How the Dollar Replaced the Pound Sterling as the World Currency"

Student: Koblenz, Lawrence
Advisor: Jackson, Kenneth T.
Dissertation title: "The Making of Modern Cancer: A Medical, Institutional, and Social History, 1874-1920"

Student: Lieb, Emily
Advisor: Kessler-Harris, Alice
Dissertation title: "Fort Apache, USA: The Destruction of American Cities, 1968-83"

Student: Montague, Rodney
Advisor: Foner, Eric
Dissertation title: "The Tie That Binds: A Study of Social Reorganization and Dependency in the South Carolina Upcountry, 1860-95"

Student: Murphy, Kevin
Advisor: Brinkley, Alan
Dissertation title: "The Legacy of Reform: Progressive Persistence in National Politics, 1919-28"

Student: Perl-Rosenthal, Nathan
Advisor: Foner, Eric
Dissertation title: “Corresponding Republics: Letter-Writing and the Organization of Revolutionary Movements in America, the Netherlands, and France, ca. 1765-1795”

Student: Petrulis, Jason
Advisor: Brinkley, Alan
Dissertation title: "Marketing the American Way, 1932-48"

Student: Pillsbury, Elizabeth
Advisor: Blackmar, Elizabeth
Dissertation title: "Turbulent Waters: The Environmental Transformation of the Long Island Sound, 1920-2000"

Student:Popescu, Adina
Advisor: Blackmar, Elizabeth
Dissertation title: "The Grain Trade During World War I: Wartime Regulation and the Concentration of Agricultural Capital"

Student: Ramos, Lisa
Advisor: Brinkley, Alan
Dissertation title: "George I. Sanchez and the 'Class Apart' Theory: The Politics of Mexican American Citzenship"

Student: Rickford, Russell
Advisor: Foner, Eric
Dissertation title: A Struggle in the Arena of Ideas: Black Independent Schools, Nation Building and the Evolution of Identity, 1965-1980

Student: Robeson, Elizabeth Lynn
Advisor: Fields, Barbara
Dissertation title: "Death in the Family: The Lowman Lynchings of 1926"

Student: Savage, Robert
Advisor: Bushman, Richard
Dissertation title: "Where Subjects were Citizens: The Emergence of a Rupublican Language and Polity in Colonial American Court Culture: 1630-1776"

Student: Soskis, Benjamin
Advisor: Blackmar, Elizabeth
Dissertation title: "The Problem of Charity in the American Industrial Age, 1865-1950"

Student: Sullivan, Stephen
Advisor: Jackson, Kenneth T.
Dissertation title: "The Social History of the Brooklyn Irish, 1850–1900"

Student: Tammi, Jennifer
Advisor: Kessler-Harris, Alice
Dissertation title: "Minding Our Own Business: Community, Consumers, and Cooperation in the 20th Century"

Student: Tejani, James
Advisor: Foner, Eric
Dissertation title: "Steam Archipelago: Railroad Monopolies, Western Expansion, and the Making of an American Pacific, 1869-1915"

Student: Thomas, Robert
Advisor: Blake, Casey
Dissertation title: Enlightenment & Authority: The Committee on Social Thought 1942-1968

Student: Toler, Herbert
Advisor: Foner, Eric
Dissertation title: "Religion and Reconstruction in Washington, D.C., 1862-78"

Student: Tvrdy, Linda
Advisor: Foner, Eric
Dissertation title: "Constitutional Rights in a Common Law World: The Reconstruction of North Carolina’s Legal Order, 1863-80"

Student: Umezaki, Toru
Advisor: Brinkley, Alan
Dissertation title: "Revolution as the Measure of Mankind: New York in the Age of National Liberation Movements"

Student: Ventura, Theresa
Advisor: Foner, Eric
Dissertation title: "Reforming Empire: American Progressives in the Philippines, 1898-1913"

Student: Williams, Kareen
Advisor: Blackmar, Elizabeth
Dissertation title: "The Evolution of Political Violence in Jamaica, 1944-80"

Student: Wolff, Joshua
Advisor: Foner, Eric
Dissertation title: "Western Union and Its Critics: Monopoly, Antimonopoly, and the Telegraph, 1861-84"

Student: Young, Neil
Advisor: Brinkley, Alan
Dissertation title: "Battling the ERA: Mormons, Baptists, Catholics, and the Rise of 'Pro-Family' Politics"

Student: Van, Rachel
Advisor: Kessler-Harris, Alice
Dissertation title: Free Trade & Family Values: Kinship Networks and the Development of American Capitalism in the 19th Century.