Recent American Studies Graduate Alumni
Neill Esquibel-Kennedy (PhD 2024)
Becoming Mexican Kansas: A Genealogy of Racial Capitalism and Community-Building
Advisor: Elizabeth Esch
Giang Nguyen-Dien (PhD 2024)
Feeling History: The Specter of War, Geography of Violence, and Vietnamese Refugee Affective Worlding
Advisor: Elizabeth Esch
William Adams (PhD 2023)
Daughters of Ida B. Wells: Black Women's Activism in Chicago, 1955-1987
Advisor: Randal M. Jelks
Bobby Cervantes (PhD 2023)
Las Colonias: Latino Housing and American Poverty on the Modern Border
Advisor: David Roediger
Kathryn Robinson (MA 2023)
Lynch Law and the American Project: How White Colonists Adapted European Precedent to Structure Racial Citizenship
Advisor: David Roediger
Jose Cadena (PhD 2022)
Expect Delays: At the Crossroads of Higher Education
Advisors: David Roediger, Chris Perreira
William Garcia-Medina (PhD 2022)
Making Black Public Humanities in South Florida: Fugitive Pedagogies, Self-Making, and Memory Work
Advisors: Randal M. Jelks, Clarence Lang
Ivery Goldstein (PhD 2022)
Legal Fictions: Disability Employment Discrimination in the United States Supreme Court 1998-2003
Advisor: Randal M. Jelks
Marilyn Ortega (PhD 2022)
Haunting the Discourse: Epistemic Disobedience and Refusal as a Generative Praxis
Advisors: Sherrie Tucker, Sarah Deer
Ben Schmack (PhD 2022)
Hate-State: Klansmen, Communists, and America’s Perpetual Red Scare
Advisor: David Roediger
Ariane Tulloch (PhD 2022)
Living La Vida Negra: A Look at the Everyday Lives of Afro-Latinas
Advisor: Randal M. Jelks
Elizabeth Wilhelm (PhD 2022)
Realizing Reformation: The Building of the American Correctional Association and the Carceral State
Advisor: Margaret Kelley
Mica Mendez (MA 2022)
"It Takes a Cosmopolitan Taste, or None at All" - Consumption, Performance, and Race in Enchanted Tiki Rooms
Advisor: Elizabeth Esch
Hannah Bailey (MA 2020, PhD 2021)
“Colonized By Freedom:” Making the State, Private Property, and Race in Kansas
Advisor: Elizabeth Esch
Jenna Lyons (MA 2014, PhD 2021)
“Preserve America”: A Grounded Study of History, Heritage, and Tourism in a Small Town
Advisors: Jennifer Hamer, Randal M. Jelks
Kathryn Vaggalis (MA 2013, PhD 2021)
Off-White Brides and the Sanctity of Citizenship: American Marriage and Romantic Love in the Development of Twentieth-Century Immigration Politics
Advisors: David Roediger, Jennifer Hamer
Ora McWilliams (PhD 2019)
‘Yes, But What Have You Done for Me Lately?’: Intersections of Intellectual Property, Work-for-Hire, and The Struggle of the Creative Precariat in the American Comic Book Industry
Advisors: Ben Chappell, Elizabeth Esch
Rachel Schwaller (MA 2015, PhD 2019)
God’s Economy: The Interconnection of Evangelicalism and Neoliberalism in the United States, 1940-2000.
Advisor: Randal M. Jelks
Alex Stucky (MA 2014, PhD 2019)
WHITE LIBERALISM IN BLACK COMICS: METAPHORICAL MARGINALIZATION AND THE DISPLACEMENT OF AMERICA
Advisor: Ruben Flores
Jonathan Burrow-Branine (MA 2013, PhD 2018)
Community of Counter-Conduct: Politics and Practices of LGBTQ Christian Activism in Evangelicalism
Advisor: Ben Chappell
Saoussen Nour El Imene Cheddadi (MA 2013, PhD 2018)
The Fulbright Program in Algeria (2008-2016): Higher Education, Soft Power, and Transnational Intellectual Subjects
Advisor: Sherrie Tucker
Gamze Kati Gümüş (PhD 2018)
“An Organ of the Irish Race on the Continent”: The Pilot, Irish Immigration, and Irish-American Identity, 1851-66
Advisor: Cheryl Lester
Jordan Bloom (MA/MUP 2018)
A Study of Three Eastern Pennsylvania Far-Right Informants
Advisor: Ruben Flores
Hollie Hall (MA 2018)
The implementation of American educational policy in the Philippines (1890-1910): Analysing the rhetoric of imperialism and exceptionalism in Filipino educational policy.
Advisor: Elizabeth Esch
Andrea Clark (MA/MUP 2017)
Sensing the Meaning of the City: A Case for Using Visual Ethnography in Urban Planning
Advisor: Ben Chappell
Steven Marston (PhD 2016)
Intimate Collisions: Identity, Community, and Place in the Kansas Dirt-Track Auto Racing Sphere
Advisor: Ben Chappell
Stephanie Krehbiel (PhD 2015)
Pacifist Battlegrounds: Violence, Community, and the Struggle for LGBTQ Justice in the Mennonite Church USA
Advisor: Randal M. Jelks
Angela Liljequist (PhD 2015)
"Soft, Glossy Tresses": Shampoo Advertisements, White Women's Hair, and the Late- and Post- World War II Domestic Ideal
Advisor: Ann Schofield
John Shreve (MA 2012, PHD 2015)
TRANSFORMATION AND RESILIENCE AT SHURI-JO: DEFINING A GENOME OF PLACE
Advisors: Cheryl Lester, Dennis Domer
Kaitlin Walker (MA 2015)
William Bishop (PhD 2014)
The New York Yankees as an American Cultural Icon, 1940-1970
Advisor: James Carothers
Crystal Boson (PhD 2014)
Digital Loa and Faith You Can Taste: Hoodoo in the American Imagination
Advisor: Randal M. Jelks
Christopher Robinson (PhD 2014)
Firing the Canon: Multiple Insularities in Jazz Criticism
Advisor: Sherrie Tucker
Battsetseg Serj (PhD 2014)
Building Bridges Across Cultures: A Case Study of the People-to-People Campaign, 1956-1975
Advisor: Sherrie Tucker, Theodore Wilson
Christopher Kaluzienski (MA 2014)
Cory Schmidt (MA 2014)
Jenni Styles (MA 2014)
Thanh Hai Le Cao (MA 2009, PhD 2013)
CRAFTING A NEW SELF IN DIASPORA: A STUDY OF THE 1.5 GENERATION OF VIETNAMESE AMERICANS
Advisor: Sherrie Tucker
Damon Talbott (MA 2008, PhD 2013)
Senses of Taste: Duncan Hines and American Gastronomy, 1931-1962
Advisor: Ann Schofield
Peter Williams (PhD 2013)
Weird Bodily Noises: Improvising Race, Gender, and Jazz History
Advisor: Sherrie Tucker
Justine Greve (MA 2013)
Angela Lindsey-Nunn (MA 2013)
Hong Cai (PhD 2012)
THE "DEAR DIANE" LETTERS AND THE ENCOUNTER OF CHINESE YOUNG WOMEN IN CONTEMPORARY AMERICA
Advisors: David Katzman, Cheryl Lester
Sang Jo Kim (PhD 2012)
"We Shouldn't Be Forgotten": Korean Military Brides and Koreans in Kansas
Advisor: Cheryl Lester
Megan Williams (MA 2007, PhD 2012)
Performing Lena: Race, Representation, and the Postwar Autobiographical Performances of Lena Horne
Advisor: Sherrie Tucker
Avery Dame (MA 2012)
Sean Malone (MA 2012)
Eliott Reeder (MA 2012)
Anja Quisbrock (MA 2012)
John Vilanova (MA 2012)
Jordan Leary Wade (MA 2012)
Qiang Zhao (MA 2012)
Jo Zanice Bond (PhD 2011)
Race, Place, and Family: Narratives of the Civil Rights Movement in Brownsville, Tennessee, and the Nation
Advisors: William Tuttle, Sherrie Tucker
Milton Wendland (PhD 2011)
Real, Truly Live Places: Notes toward the Queer Uncanny
Advisors: Ann Schofield, Kathryn Conrad
Doretha Williams (PhD 2011)
Kansas Grows the Best Wheat and the Best Race Women: Black Women's Club Movement in Kansas 1900-30
Advisors: David Katzman, Randal M. Jelks
Tyler Branson (MA 2011)
Ruben Afagla (PhD 2010)
Reading Cook-Lynn: Anti-Colonialism, Cultural Resistance, and Native Empowerment
Advisor: Cheryl Lester
Rebecca Barrett-Fox (PhD 2010)
"Pray Not for this People for Their Good": Westboro Baptist Church, the Religious Right, and American Nationalism
Advisors: Norman Yetman, Tim Miller
Lindsey Feitz (PhD 2010)
DEMOCRATIZING BEAUTY: AVON'S GLOBAL BEAUTY AMBASSADORS AND THE TRANSNATIONAL MARKETING OF FEMININITY, 1954-2010
Advisor: Joane Nagel
Jaime Gassmann (PhD 2010)
PATROLLING THE HOMEFRONT: THE EMOTIONAL LABOR OF ARMY WIVES VOLUNTEERING IN FAMILY READINESS GROUPS
Advisor: Brian Donovan
Daniel Kerr (PhD 2010)
Sheepdogs and Barbed Wire: An Environmental History of Grazing on the High Plains
Advisor: Karl Brooks
Jeonguk Kim (PhD 2010)
Boxing the Boundaries: Prize Fighting, Masculinities, and Shifting Social and Cultural Boundaries in the United State, 1882-1913
Advisor: Sherrie Tucker
Elizabeth Miller (PhD 2010)
Moving to the Head of the River: The Early Years of the U.S. Battered Women's Movement
Advisor: Ann Schofield
Michael Sweeney (PhD 2010)
Ancestors, Avotaynu, Roots: An Inquiry into American Genealogy Discourse
Advisor: Cheryl Lester
Thomas Thirlkel (PhD 2010)
The Forgotten Children: African American Children and Child Welfare Reform in St. Louis, 1890-1930
Advisors: Ray Hiner, Cheryl Lester
Liz Yeager Reece (PhD 2010)
Understanding 'It': Affective Authenticity, Space, and the Phish Scene
Advisor: Sherrie Tucker
Joel Luber (MA 2010)
Perry Collins (MA 2010)
"The Merest Novice": The Snapshot, Gender, and the Museum, 1888-2008
Advisor: John Pultz
Monique Laney (PhD 2009)
Transnational Migration and National Memory: How German Rocket Engineers became Americans in Huntsville, Alabama
Advisor: Sherrie Tucker
Hilary Lowe (PhD 2009)
LITERARY DESTINATIONS: MARK TWAIN'S HOUSES AND LITERARY TOURISM
Advisor: Cheryl Lester