Historical Studies MA Alumni News

For a great article on our Public History track in the UMBC Magazine (Fall 2014), click here!

Bria Warren, ’21 M.A., Historical Studies (Advisor: Anne Sarah Rubin). After graduating from UMBC, Bria worked as an education fellow at the Maryland Center for History and Culture. In August 2021, she was chosen to work as a Community Archives Fellow for Johns Hopkins University.

Rhiannon Dowling, ’09 M.A., Historical Studies (Advisor: Kate Brown) earned her PhD in History from the University of California, Berkeley in 2017. She is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the Harriman Institute, Columbia University. Her dissertation entitled “Brezhnev’s War on Crime: The Criminal in Soviet Society, 1963-1982″ won this the 2018 Robert C. Tucker/Stephen F. Cohen Dissertation Prize. The prize is sponsored by the KAT Charitable Foundation and is awarded annually by the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies (ASEEES) for an outstanding English-language doctoral dissertation in Soviet or Post-Soviet politics and history.

Dewen Zhang, ’02 M.A. Historical Studies, Chinese history. Ph.D. at SUNY/Stony Brook, Chinese history. Her dissertation explored the precarious relationship between Chinese women and World War II, 1937-45 (known in China as the Anti-Japanese War of Resistance). Dewen is an Assistant Prof. in Chinese and Asian history at Randolph Macon in Ashland, VA.

Larry DeWitt, ’04 M.A. Historical Studies, currently a Ph.D student in Public Policy (Historical Track) at UMBC, is the co-author with Edward D. Berkowitz of a new book, The Other Welfare: Supplemental Security Income and U.S. Social Policy (Cornell University Press, 2013).

Alice Donahue, ’05 B.A. and ’08 M.A. Historical Studies, is the Assistant Director of the National Electronics Museum in Linthicum, MD.

Lucie Kyrova, ’03 B.A. History and ’05 M.A. Historical Studies, obtained her Ph.D. in History from William and Mary in 2017 and started a full-time position in the Department of North American Studies at the Charles University, Prague.  Lucie’s dissertation is titled, “The Right to Think for Themselves”: Native American Intellectual Sovereignty and Internationalism during the Cold War, 1950-1989.”

Beth Tapscott, ’06 M.A. Historical Studies, defended her Ph.D thesis ‘Propaganda and Persuasion in the Early Scottish Reformation, c.1527-1557’ at the University of St. Andrews, UK, in 2013.  Beth adjuncted at UMBC, teaching courses on Tudor and Stuart England, the History of Christianity, and Western Civ.  She is a tenure-track faculty member in the History Department at Lindsey Wilson College in Kentucky since fall 2015.

Joe Tropea ’06 History B.A. and ’08 M.A. Historical Studies, made a documentary, “Hit & Stay,” that tells the story of nine Catholic activists who protested the Vietnam War by burning draft files in Catonsville on May 17, 1968.  He is the Curator of Films and Photographs and Digital Project Coordinator for the Maryland Historical Society. http://umbcinsights.wordpress.com/2013/05/01/joe-tropea-06-history-b-a-and-08-historical-studies-m-a-in-the-baltimore-brew/

Joanna Lamb ’06 M.A. Historical Studies is finishing her PhD in medieval church history at Catholic University of America.  She adjuncted at UMBC in fall 2015!

Yiqing Chen, ’08 Historical Studies, Chinese History. Worked at US-China Exchange agencies in DC for a couple of years, and now has her own company offering Chinese Language/Education on China/Consulting for government agencies and businesses in Los Angeles, California.

Bethanee Bemis, ’09 B.A. and ’11 M.A. Historical Studies, is a Museum Specialist at the National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C.

Amy Ciesielski, ’09 M.A. Historical Studies, is a Curator for the Moving Image Research Collections at the University of South Carolina.

Martin Cullen, ’09 B.A. and ’11 M.A. Historical Studies, is a Collections Accountability Specialist at the National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C.

Teresa Foster, ’09 GWST and History BA, ’11 M.A. Historical Studies, and currently a LLC/History Ph.D. candidate, won a 2013-2014 Wing Graduate Fellowship from the Maryland Historical Society to carry out research for her thesis work on female convicts in the Chesapeake.

Ellie Ginsburg, ’09 M.A. Historical Studies, is a Locations Assistant for the New Orleans Film Industry.

Homira Pashai, ’09 B.A. and ’11 M.A. Historical Studies, is a contractor at the Freer and Sackler Galleries in Washington, D.C.

Peter Bunten, ’10 M.A. Historical Studies, is a Site Interpreter at Philipsburg Manor in Sleepy Hollow, N.Y.

Joe Rosalski, ’10 M.A. Historical Studies, is an adjunct professor at Stevenson University.

Allison J. Seyler, ’10 B.A. History and French, ’12, M.A. Historical Studies, Public History track, is working as a Research Archivist at the Maryland State Archives with the Legacy of Slavery in Maryland team. In this position she conducts research on the lives of slaves and slaveowners in Maryland, bringing to light their relationships and often revealing slaves’ paths towards freedom.

Bailey Ball, ’11 M.A. Historical Studies, is a Preparator and Archivist at the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C.

Laura Marshallsay, ’11 M.A. Historical Studies, is now “Widening Participation Project Assistant” at City University in London.

James Risk  ’11 M.A. Historical Studies, defended his doctoral dissertation on March 30, 2017, and will be graduating from the University of South Carolina with his Ph.D. in the History of Science, Technology, and the Environment this May.
Daniel Burge, ’11 M.A. Historical Studies, earned his PhD at the University of Alabama in August 2017, with a dissertation titled “A Struggle Against Fate: The Opponents of Manifest Destiny and the Collapse of the Continental Dream, 1846-1871.” Daniel recently published an an article, “Manifest Mirth: The Humorous Critique of Manifest Destiny, 1846-1858” in the Western Historical Quarterly.

Mia Brown,
’13 M.A. Historical Studiesreceived a fellowship from the Space Policy Institute to pursue a Masters degree in International Science and Technology Policy at The George Washington University.  She wrote an article titled Launch Dilemna: The role of the commercial sector in America’s space program which was published by the Brookings Institution.

Shae Adams, ’13 M.A. Historical Studies, is a Curatorial Assistant at the W.K. Gordon Center for Industrial History of Texas.

Theresa Donnelly, ’13 M.A. Historical Studies, is a Museum Educator at the Maryland Historical Society.

Jenny Lee Hansen, ’10 BA, ’13 M. A. Historical Studies, is a Philanthropic Services Associate for The City Fund at The Community Foundation for the National Capital Region.

Johanna Schein, ’13 M.A. Historical Studies, is an Archives Technician at the Center for Legislative Archives in Washington, D.C., part of the National Archives and Records Administration, which holds the historically valuable records of the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives.

Amy Zanoni, ’13 MA Historical Studies, is pursuing a Ph.D. in American Women’s history at Rutgers University, fully funded with a five-year “Excellence Package” and a Humanities Grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation as a first year supplement.

Dominique L. Covino, ’13 M.A. Historical Studies, was a Ph.D. student in Early American history at Purdue University in Indiana on a university-wide Ross fellowship, which provides one year of support from the Graduate School and three more years of support from the History department.

Elizabeth Pente, ’13 M.A. Historical Studies, received a 3-year PhD studentship in Public History at the University of Huddersfield in the UK.  She will be working on a project about imagining communities, and particularly how a ‘sense of history’ encourages civic engagement. 

Courtney Hobson, ’14 M.A Historical Studies, published an exhibit review in The Public Historian: A Journal of Public History 35, 3 (August 2013), 122-126.  Courtney’s review of Sotterley Plantation!  She recently published an article based on her MA thesis. She is the Coordinator for the Dresher Center for the Humanities at UMBC!

David Warner, ’14 M.A. Historical Studies, has once again left the law and has accepted a job as the Director of the Wade House Museum in Greenbush, Wisconsin.  It is one of 13 historic sites owned by the Wisconsin Historical Society (a state agency).

Kelly Daughtridge, ’17 MA. Historical Studies, won the runner up prize for her M.A. thesis “Women’s Funerary Monuments Commissioned by Men in Early Modern England,” for an honorable mention in this year’s MA thesis competition. This is not only a national competition, but includes Canadian universities as well!  The award, which carries a stipend of $100, will be announced at the annual meeting of the North American Conference on British Studies in Denver, CO (3-5 November) and posted on the NACBS website.

Bill Thompson, a current M.A. student, has published an essay in the Fall/Winter 2016 edition of the Maryland Historical Magazine entitled “Theodore McKeldin and the 1952 Republican Convention.”

 

Send YOUR news to Prof. Amy Froide at froide@umbc.edu so we may include you on this page!