Recent MA Graduates and Thesis Topics

FALL 2023

Brianna Baker, “A Monument to Negro Womanhood:” The Women of the National Training School for Women and Girls, 1879-1961
Advisor: Michelle Scott

George Lewis, “Oh Lord I want to be in that number:” Identity & Jazz Tourism in New Orleans.
Advisor: Michelle Scott

SUMMER 2023

Julie Kim, My Kungomo, An Independent “Modern Girl”:  Family Stories From the Japanese Occupation of Korea and World War II
Advisor:  Meredith Oyen

SPRING 2023

Austen Edelenbos, Remembering Sacrifice: Veterans of the United States Colored Troops and the Battlefield of Civil War Memory
Advisor:  Anne S. Rubin

Garrett Freas, Uncommon Ground: The Image and Reality of the Congress of Racial Equality’s Interracialism During the Long Civil Rights Movement
Advisor:  G. Derek Musgrove

Michael Morris, “Leave Her Johnny Leave Her:” The Cold War and the Decline of American Shipbuilding
Advisor:  Christy Chapin

Nolan Varee, “More Enduring Structures” The Social and Economic Transformation of Pennsylvania
Advisor:  Anne S. Rubin

Nikki Vietz, “Putting on the Posh:” Retail, Crime, Gender, Class, and the Forty Elephants in 19th and 20th Century London
Advisor:  Amy Froide

FALL 2022

Corey Fitzpatrick, “Is that a Bird or a Plane in the Distance? No, it’s Superman”: Metropolis, Illinois and the Hope in Becoming a Destination as Superman’s Hometown.
Advisor:  Melissa Blair

Rogers, Samantha,   Daily Life and the Landscape of Two Maryland Industrial Schools for Girls, 1916-1989.
Advisor:  Melissa Blair

SUMMER 2022
Debold, Beth,
“According to my True Meaning.”  Emotions & Will-Makers in Southern Britain, 1660-1690.
Advisor:  Amy Froide
Gasparino-Rodriguez, Fernanda, The Emergency Committee to Aid Latin American Scholars (ECALAS):  Liberal Academics and the Contradictions of Cold War Foreign Policy in Latin America
Advisor:  Marjoleine Kars
Peterson, Zachary, “The Group is a ‘Fraternal Order’ and Not a Labor Union”.  The 1974 Baltimore Police Strike and the Conservative Turn in Police Labor Union Organizing.
Advisor:  Derek Musgrove

SPRING 2022
Hannah Balik, Eating, Public Space, and Identity in Jewish Baltimore, 1900-1930
Advisor: Melissa Blair
Jeff Cooley, Charismatic Leaders of the First Crusade: The Use of Preaching and Miraculous Events in Motivating the Crusaders to Take “The Holy Land.”
Advisor: Susan McDonough
Noah Jaques, Facts Do Not Speak for Themselves: The Challenges to Historical Empiricism and Their Impact on the Teaching of Historical Methodology
Advisor: Daniel Ritschel

FALL 2021
Domonique Flowers, “The Reckoning of Republican Allies”: The Collaborative Political Efforts Between Black and White Republican Leaders in Post-Reconstruction Baltimore.
Advisor: Michelle Scott
Jessica Riley, Louisville’s Black Laborers of the Campbell Tobacco Company, 1915-1930
Advisor: Michelle Scott

SUMMER 2021
Eric Burroughs, “Let No Irreverent Hand Change It”: The Interpretation of Slavery at George Washington’s Mount Vernon, 1853 to Present.
Advisor: Denise Meringolo
Pat Brynes, Renaissance Records: The Communities and Material Culture Behind the Revival of Vinyl Records from the 1980’s to 2010’s.
Advisor: Michelle Scott

SPRING 2021
Ana Ilic-Hein, “Themes of Othering in Croatian and Serbian History Textbooks in the 1950’s”
Advisor: Daniel Ritschel
Chris Ragen, “Atomic City: Las Vegas and the Downwinders
Advisor:  Andrew Nolan
Bria Warren, “Swift and Certain Vengeance”: Lynching Rhetoric in Maryland Newspapers, 1954-1900
Advisor:  Anne Rubin

SUMMER 2020
Saul Espinal-Acosta, Goal!  Americans Embrace the Beautiful Game: How the Upper White Middle Class’ Acceptance of Soccer Affected Minority Communities from the 1980s-2000s
Advisor: Andrew Nolan

SPRING 2020
Andrew Arvizu, Historical Simulations and the Mechanics of Conquest
Advisor: Daniel Ritschel
Morgan Miller, “A Town Within a Forest”: The Walking Tour of Washington Grove, 1873-Present
Advisor: Denise Meringolo
Kevin Muhitch, “We are the First to Unabashedly Go Out and Ask for a Prison”:  De-industrialization and the Politics of Prison Siting in Maryland, 1975-1996
Advisor: George Derek Musgrove
Finny Rocca, Sexuality, Socialism & Sandals: Studying the Obsolescence of Uranian Epistemology, 1867-1933
Advisor: Daniel Ritschel
Zachariah Tucker, Quarantined and Sequestered:  Tattoo Charlie’s and Tattoo Regulation in Baltimore, 1938-1970
Advisor: Melissa Blair

SUMMER 2019
David Cunningham, Taming the Desert: Fasting, Reform, and the Search for God
Advisor: Susan McDonough
Francis Ku, The Price of Dependence: The Deleterious Effects of the Kuomingtang’s Reliance on the United States Aid, 1941-1949
Advisor: Nianshen Song

SPRING 2019
Kayla Piechowiak, An Exhibit of Women, By Women, But for Women?: The Limits of Interpretation at the Smithsonian
Advisor: Denise Meringolo
Jordan Ritchie, Underwood and Underwood Company: Early Twentieth Century Pioneers of American Photojournalism
Advisor: Denise Meringolo
Camilla Azucena Sandoval, “What White Nonsense is this?”  Investigating the Seldom Seen or Heard Stories of Latinxs in the National Register of Historic Places.
Advisor: Melissa Blair
Maayan Rosen, Mistresses of the Press: The Roles of Women in Print Houses in 17th Century England
Advisor: Amy Froide

FALL 2018
Heather Crandall, Astronomy’s Great Debate Over the Size of the Universe: Scientists’ and Historians’ Changing Assessments
Advisor: Joseph Tatarewicz
Alan Gibson, Reciprocity Matters During the Civil War: Canadian Raw Goods and the Union Supply
Advisor: Anne Sarah Rubin
Marshal Golden, The Life and Times of John Graham Chambers: Sports and Commercialization of Leisure in Victorian Britain
Advisor: Daniel Ritschel
Samantha Parker, The First Sexual Revolution:  A Comparative Study of Premarital Pregnancy Rates in Maryland and Massachusetts, 1700-1810
Advisor: Terry Bouton

SUMMER 2018
Laina Miller, Singing Songs and Carrying Candles: The Development of Ashkenazi Jewish Marriage Customs and Rituals from Talmudic and Christian Sources, C. 850-1300 CE
Advisor: Susan McDonough
Zachary Utz, Re-Thinking “The American Dream of Integration” in Suburbia: Race, Class and Resegregation in Randallstown, 1956-2003
Advisor: George Derek Musgrove

SPRING 2018
Jason Aglietti, The Religion the Revolution Forgot: The Persecution of the Maryland Quakers During the American Revolution
Advisor: Terry Bouton
Sudaba Lezgiyeva, Without a Country: A Stateless Armenian Refugees in the USSR and Russia, 1987-2003
Advisor: Kate Brown
Susan Philpott, Pride, Inc.: Black Power and Black Capital in Washington, D.C.
Advisor: George Derek Musgrove

FALL 2017
Heidi Carbaugh, “Mappipng Prostitution in Gilded Age Baltimore”
Advisor: Anne Sarah Rubin
Sherry Ryan, “Farms at Gettysburg”
Advisor: Anne Sarah Rubin

SUMMER 2017
Tucker Foltz, “Freedom and Total Loss:  Tensions, Identity Formation and the Back-To-The Land Movement in 1970’s Vermont
Advisor: Denise Meringolo
Sydney Jenkins, “The Arabbers: A History of Baltimore Street Peddlers From 1945 to the Present”
Advisor: Denise Meringolo
Georgia Ladd, “Remembering Dixie in a Border State: Reunion and Reconciliation in Post-Civil War Maryland”
Advisor: Anne Sarah Rubin
Robin Martin, “Encounters Through Encroachment: 17th and 18th Century Interactions on Maryland’s Eastern Shore”
Advisor: Melissa Blair
Molly Ricks, “Buried Memories: The Evolving Symbolic Significance of Black and White Burial Grounds at Mount Vernon, Monticello and Montpelier ”
Advisor: Anne Sarah Rubin
Stephanie Smith, “The Canadian Bicentennial of the War of 1812: The Problem of Techumseh”
Advisor: Daniel Ritschel
Laquanda Walters Cooper, “Every Evidence of Our Progress”: The North Carolina Negro State Fairs, 1879-1907
Advisor: Michelle Scott

SPRING 2017
Kelly Daughtridge, “Defining Their Past to Immortalize Their Future: Women’s Monuments in Early Modern England”
Advisor: Amy Froide
Katherine Fusick, “Ladies in Rebellion: Women of the 1715 and 1745 Jacobite Risings”
Advisor: Amy Froide
Andrew Holter, “The Vanguard is Never Caught Napping: Informants and Police Inside the Black Panthers in Baltimore, 1968-1972”
Advisor: George Derek Musgrove
Sarah Huston, “The Lives of Enslaved and Free Black Children in Baltimore Under Apprenticeship Laws, 1790-1840”
Advisor: Anne Sarah Rubin
Jennifer Montooth, “Bridges to Dignity”: Roy Innis, Conservative Black Power, and the Transformation of CORE, 1968-1998
Advisor: George Derek Musgrove
Chelsea Mueller, “Ink, Mirrors, and Capes: How Comic Books Mirrored Societal Events in American Culture From 1954-1990”
Advisor: Meredith Oyen

FALL 2016
Joshua Fertig, “Bars on the Golden Door: Post WWII Security Screenings and Their Administrations”
Advisor: Meredith Oyen

SUMMER 2016
Celso Baldivieso, “Irradiating Eden: The El Verde Experiment and the Atomic Energy Commission’s Nuclear Prospecting in Latin America, 1954-1970”
Advisor: Kate Brown

SPRING 2016
Michael Bealefeld, “The Peculiar Fidelity of the Old Line State”
Advisor: Anne Sarah Rubin
Jacob Benson, “City Architect, County Architect”
Advisor: Melissa Blair
Conor Donan, “The Streets of Baltimore-The Irish in Baltimore City”
Advisor: Anne Sarah Rubin
Tyler Peterson, “Bridging the Gap: Culture and Politics in Sino-American Normalization”
Advisor: Meredith Oyen
Allyson Schuele, “Marrying Down: A Strategy for Aristocratic Widows in Tudor England”
Advisor: Amy Froide
Michael Stone,”Understanding the Uprising”
Advisor: Denise Meringolo
Coleburn Volman, “Child of Man? Child of God?: Adolescence and the Ambiguity of Parenthood in Early Modern England”
Advisor: Amy Froide

FALL 2015
Elizabeth Cusick, “Anarchist Heaven:  Barcelona 1936-1937.”
Advisor: Daniel Ritschel
Aiden J. Faust, “Neighborhood Matters:  What Baltimore Learned from the War on Poverty.”
Advisor: George Derek Musgrove
Aunaleah Gelles, “Commemorating the Defense of Baltimore, 1815-2015.”
Advisor: Denise Meringolo

SUMMER 2015
Genevieve White, “Gone With Only Memory Left”: The Wartime Memoir of Emily Raine Williams
Advisor: Meredith Oyen
Nichole Zang, “Holy Temples to Dark Rooms: The origins of Baltimore’s Juvenile Reform Movement of the 19th Century”
Advisor: Anne Sarah Rubin

SPRING 2015
Jessica E. Deane, “Glory Stands Beside Our Grief:  The Maryland Division of the United Daughters of the Confederacy’s Commemoration and Memorial Efforts in Baltimore”
Advisor: Anne Sarah Rubin
Talbot A. Kuhn, “Maryland and the Moderate Conundrum:  Free Black Policy in an Antebellum Border State”
Advisor: Anne Sarah Rubin

FALL 2014
Susan Chumley, “The United States Air Force Band:  Musical Ambassadors on a Cold War Stage”
Advisor: Denise Meringolo
Sarah Hammersley, “The Family Bond: Benevolent Black Slaveholding in Early National Maryland”
Advisor: Terry Bouton
Heather M. Steven, “The Use of Gender During the E. G. Wharton Trial”
Advisor: Michelle Scott

SUMMER 2014
Megan C. Maxwell, “Black Faces in Blue Uniforms:  Integrating the Baltimore Police Department, 1920-1950”
Advisor: Michelle Scott
Nancy Watts, “The History of Kindergarten in Baltimore City, Maryland”
Advisor: Anne Sarah Rubin
Zachary Garceau,” Johnny Unitas: Baltimore’s Cold Warrior”
Advisor: George Derek Musgrove

SPRING 2014
Christopher Brown, “The Writing on the Walls and Other Places: American Civil War Graffiti”
Advisor: Anne Sarah Rubin
Katherine Dufresne, “Images and Reality: War Brides and Media Representation”
Advisor: Meredith Oyen
Steve Flint, “The Vietnam War: Communist Mass Mobilization at the Local Level”
Advisor: Ka-che Yip
Courtney Hobson, “A Mother’s Inheritance: Women, Interracial Identity, and Emancipation in Maryland, 1664-1820″
Advisor: Marjoleine Kars
Jacob Hutton,”The Other Side of the Riots”
Advisor: George Derek Musgrove
Colin Leach, “Waiting for Supertrain: Trains, Technocracy, and the Great Society”
Advisor: Christy Chapin
Caitlin McGeever, “’That Which is Spirit is Spirit’: Male and Female Quaker Perspectives in Political Context”
Advisor: Amy Froide
David Warner, “Executive Privilege and the Spirit of Republicanism in the Washington Administration”
Advisor: Marjoleine Kars

FALL 2013
Shae Adams, “Identity in Black and White: Indian Boarding School Postcards”
Advisor: Terry Bouton
Dorothy Alexander, “Hilltop:  A Historic African-American Community”
Advisor: Denise Meringolo
William J. Carroll, “Beer Wars:  The Fight for Independent Brewing in Baltimore”
Advisor: Denise Meringolo
Theresa Donnelly, “George Washington’s Laboring Women:  The Work and Lives of the Enslaved Female Field Workers at Mount Vernon, 1785-1787”
Advisor: Marjoleine Kars
Karl Dotterweich, “’And the Hand of the Lord Was With Them’:  The Effects of Planters’ Socioeconomic Status on the Capital Trials of Enslaved Africans in Colonial Maryland, 1729-1775”
Advisor: Marjoleine Kars
Gary McMullin, “Country First:  African Colonization and the Role of Southern Unionists, 1817-1862”
Advisor: Anne Sarah Rubin

SUMMER 2013
Christy Gretsinger, “Oblivion: An Analysis of the Decline of Feminism Within the Owenite Movement”
Advisor: Daniel Ritschel
James Reaves, “Making Down: The Life of a Pullman Porter”
Advisor: Denise Meringolo
John J. Soos, “Jacob Beser: The Forgotten Hiroshima and Nagasaki Crewmember and the Construction of Atomic Memory”
Advisor: Joe Tatarewitz

SPRING 2013
Mia Brown, “Lyndon Johnson and the Race for Peace: The 1967 Outer Space Treaty”
Advisor: Joseph Tatarewicz
Dominique L. Covino,  “‘In Great Danger of Perishing Through Poverty’: Kinship, Charity and Public Poor Relief in Somerset County, Maryland, 1665-1760”
Advisor: Marjoleine Kars
Jenny Lee Hansen, “Genocide: What Genocide?”
Advisor: Meredith Oyen
Elizabeth Pente – “Death for Dishonor in Danville”
Advisor: Michelle Scott
Johanna Schein – “Heeding Hetch Hetchy: A Public History Project”
Advisor: Denise Meringolo
Amy Zanoni – “‘Working on Many Levels’: A History of Second-Wave Feminism in Baltimore”
Advisor: Michelle Scott

FALL 2012
Brigette N. Cascio, “The More Personal Civil War: The Impact of the Civil War on Marriages”
Advisor: Anne Sarah Rubin
Meghan Colabella, “Beyond its Southern Border: An Examination of U.S. Immigration Policies (IRLA) and Mexican Migration”
Advisor: Meredith Oyen

SUMMER 2012
Kellian Kennedy, “The Civil Rights and Social Justice Movement in Baltimore, Maryland”
Advisor: Michelle Scott

SPRING 2012
Vicki Heath,” Harris’ List as a Source for the Diverse and Entrepreneurial Nature of Prostitution in Eighteenth-Century London”
Advisor: Amy Froide
Jessica Keene, “Elite Women’s Protestant Networks in Mid-Tudor England”
Advisor: Amy Froide
Owen Lourie, “A Revolution Without Change:  The Limited Effects of Suffrage Reform in Maryland, 1803-1813”
Advisor: Terry Bouton
Trisha Okine, “Real vs Real:  How the Concept of Authenticity Has Influenced Hip Hop”
Advisor: Michelle Scott
Douglas Oppenheimer, “America’s Revolutionary War”
Advisor: Terry Bouton
Tarin Rudloff, “Regulating Identities:  Governing Women’s Appearance in Early Modern England”
Advisor: Amy Froide
Allison Seylor, “In Defense of Slavery:  An Exploration of Queen Anne’s County Slave Owners, 1820-1840”
Advisor: Anne Sarah Rubin
Andrew Young, “Lexington’s Grandsons:  The Northern Response to the Pratt Street Riots”
Advisor: Anne Sarah Rubin

SUMMER 2011
Erin Estep, “A Chesapeake Childhood:  Childhood in the Colonial Chesapeake”
Advisor: Denise Meringolo
Laura Rice, “The Experience of an Enlisted U.S. Army Soldier During and After the Punitive Expedition and World War I:  Thomas F. Cunningham, A Case Study”
Advisor: Denise Meringolo
Coleen Walter, “Conserving Memory:  The Civilian Conservation Corps in Western Maryland”
Advisor: Kriste Lindenmeyer

SPRING 2011
Bailey Ball, “Never Again:  The Impulse to Commemorate the Holocaust in the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and the British Imperial War Museum”
Advisor: Rebecca Boehling
Bethany Bemis, “The People’s House?  Public Access to the White House”
Advisor: Denise Meringolo
Daniel Burge, “Manifest or Murky? A Reexamination of the Popularity of Manifest Destiny in the Antebellum Era”
Advisor: Terry Bouton
Martin Cullen, “Nation Building and Insurgency in Southeast Asia”
Advisor: Daniel Ritschel
Teresa Foster, “The Passengers of the Ship Gilbert in 1721:  British Female Convict Transportation From London to Annapolis”
Advisor: Marjoleine Kars
James Furgol, “An Analysis of Discourse and Disagreement:  The British and American Medical Associations Following WWII”
Advisor: Daniel Ritschel
Jacob Levin, “Blacks and Jews in the Black Power Movement and its Subsequent Scholarship”
Advisor: Michelle Scott
Laura Marshallsay, “WAC Voices:  The Transition of the Women’s Army Corps to the Integrated Army, 1973-1978”
Advisor: Denise Meringolo
Homira Pashai, “For the Sake of Power, Prestige or Oil:  Did Cooperation Among the Governments of the United States and Great Britain Contribute to the 1953 Coup of Iran?”
Advisor: Kriste Lindenmeyer
James Risk, “Ship to Shore:  Infrastructure and the Growth of American Seaports”
Advisor: Anne Sarah Rubin
Carol Van Natta, “Slavery and Free Black Labor in Northern Maryland, 1762 to 1864: Rethinking the Focus at Hampton National Historic Site”
Advisor: Denise Meringolo

FALL 2010
Peter Bunten, “A Vigil Strange:  The Civil War and the Creation of Memory in Ulster and Greene Counties, New York”
Advisor: Denise Meringolo
Jessica Ding, “Political Prophecy in Tudor England”
Advisor: Amy Froide