Graduate Careers & Outcomes

Over the past 10 years, our PhD program has graduated 30 students who have gone on to amazing careers. Recent graduates have been hired into tenure-track faculty positions at places like Penn State University, Rice University, and Southern Methodist University. 

Graduates who have been pursuing their careers for more than 10 years have now taken on impressive leadership positions that include directing the Kluge Center at the Library of Congress and the Gross Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Ramapo College of New Jersey. Still others have found rewarding careers as teachers and principals at private high schools, editors and developers of online journals, and even wine importers.

Placement Data from the Office of Graduate Studies

For more detailed information about what our alumni are up to now visit the Graduate School's career outcomes page.

Career Outcome Data

Placements and Accomplishments of Recent Graduates

2024

Chenxi Luo

Visiting Assistant Professor of History and Humanities
Reed College, Portland, OR

Dissertation: "Bondage in the Age of Mobility: Slavery, Gender, and Migration in Early Qing China"

Chang Xu

Assistant Professor of Department of Transnational Asian Studies
Rice University, Houston, TX

Dissertation: "Medicine on the March: Military Organizations, Medical Networks, and Empire Building, 1644-1800"

2023

Erin Barry

Administrative Staff Fellow for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion
College of the Holy Cross, Worcester, MA

Dissertation: "The “Dread Sex Cases:” Community, Citizenship, and the Regulation of Adult Theaters in the 1970s"

2022

Nan-Hsu Chen

Assistant Professor
National Taiwan Normal University, Taipei, Taiwan

Dissertation: "Frontier Dynamics, Local Actors, and the Politics of Statelessness in a Nineteenth-Century East Asian Borderland"

Xin Yu

Visiting Assistant Professor in History of China
University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, WI

Dissertation: "Law and Decisions in Corporations"

2021

Mary Andino

Senior Food & Features Editor
All Recipes

Dissertation:  "The Pursuit of Holiness in Early Modern Southern Italy"

2020

Adwoa Opong

Assistant Professor, Department of History
Chapman University, Irvine, CA

Dissertation:  "All That Is Meant By Citizenship: Women, Social Work and Development in Ghana, 1945-1970s"

2019

Waseem Bin-Kasim

Assistant Professor of History
Elon University, Elon, NC

Dissertation:  "Sanitary Segregation:  Cleansing Accra and Nairobi, 1908-1963"

Gilbert Chen

Assistant Professor of History
Towson University, Towson, MD

Dissertation:  "Living in This World:  A Social History of Buddhist Monks and Nuns in the Nineteenth-Century Western China"

Taylor Desloge

Visiting Assistant Professor
Connecticut College, New London, CT

Dissertation:  "The Tortured Pre-History of Urban Blight:  African American St. Louis and the Politics of Public Health, 1877-1940"

Boyi Chen

Associate Professor of History
Xiamen University, Xiamen, China

Dissertation:  "Beyond the Land Sea:  Diasporic South Fujianese in Hội An, Batavia, and Manila, 1550-1850"

Weicong Duan

Freelance
Indepent Researcher

Dissertation:  "Ming China As a Gunpower Empire:  Military Technology, Politics, and Fiscal Administration, 1350-1620"

Luca Foti

Retirement Operations Specialist
Principal Financial Group, St. Louis, MO

Dissertation:  “Heretical Communes: The Struggle for Authority in the Fourteenth-Century Papal Territories”

Sarah Siegel

Director of Strategic Research and Data Analysis
Colorado Education Association, Denver, CO

Dissertation: “By the People Most Affected” : Model Cities, Citizen Control, and the Broken Promises of  Urban Renewal"

Joohee Suh

Assistant Professor of History
Xavier University, Cincinnati, OH

Dissertation:  "The Afterlife of Corpses:  A Social History of Unburied Bodies in Qing China (1644-1911)"

2018

Tiffany Player

Assistant Professor of History
Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, Carbondale, IL

Dissertation: ““What Are We Going to Do For Ourselves?:” African American Women and the Politics of Slavery from the Antebellum Era to the Great Depression"

2017

Amanda L. Scott

Junior Research Group Leader
Freie Universität Berlin, Berlin, Germany

Lisa Lillie

Director, Department of History
Assistant Professor of History
Maryville University, St. Louis, MO

Dissertation: "Empire, Community, Nation: the English Merchants of Livorno, Italy and the Sociability of Commerce in Early Modernity"

Amanda L. Scott 

Assistant Professor of History
Pennsylvania State University, State College, PA

Dissertation:  "The Basque Seroras:  Local Religion, Gender, and Power in Northern Iberia, 1550-1800"

2016

Dale Kretz

Author & Labor Representative

Dissertation: "State of Health: African-American Laboring Health and the Politics of Reparations in the Age of Emancipation, 1830-1900"

Bianca Lopez

W. R. Nicholson Endowed Assistant Professor of Medieval and Renaissance Studies
Southern Methodist University, Dallas, TX

Dissertation: “The Lands of the Virgin: Sacred Economies and Local Identities in the March of Ancona, 1348-1453”

2015

Sara T. Jay

Assistant Principal, Grades 7 & 8 History Teacher, Cheerleading Coach
John Burroughs High School, St. Louis, MO

Dissertation “Falafel, Raï, and Bijoux: Cultural Exchange and the Formation of a Transnational Algerian Jewish Community, 1950-1970”

En Li

Assistant Professor of History
Drake University, Des Moines, IA

Dissertation: “Betting on Empire: A Socio-Cultural History of Gambling in Late-Qing China”

James Palmer

Assistant Professor of History
Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL

Dissertation: "Gold, Grain and Grace: Piety and Community in Late Medieval Rome"

2014

Jane F. Green

Director of Philanthropy Operations
Food & Water Watch, Washington, D.C.

Dissertation: "The Boundaries of Youth: Labor, Maturity, and Coming of Age in Early Nineteenth-Century New England, 1790-1850"

Jacob Labendz 

Director of the Gross Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies
Ramapo College of New Jersey, Mahwah, NJ

Dissertation: "Re-Negotiating Czechoslovakia: The State and the Jews in Communist Central Europe. The Czech Lands, 1945-1990"   

Scott Morris

Chair, Department of History and Advisor to the Honor Council
The Montgomery Academy, Montgomery, AL

Dissertation:  "Southern Enlightenment:  Reform and Progress in Jefferson's Virginia"

Muey Saeteurn

Assistant Professor of History
University of California MERCED, Merced, CA

Dissertation: "Cultivating Their Own in Kenya: A Social History of Maragoli Farmers and Development, 1955-1978"

Steven Schrum

Teacher of History
The Cambridge School of Dallas, Dallas, TX

Dissertation: "Beyond the Stadhouder-King: Political Economy and Regulation in the Economic Development of England and the Dutch Republic in the 1690s"

Matthew Stewart

Managing Editor
HeatlhyLeaders.com

Dissertation: "The Burden of Western History: Kansas, Collective Memory, and the Reunification of the American Empire, 1854-1913"

Beverly Tsacoyianis

Associate Professor
University of Memphis, Memphis, TN

Dissertation: "Making Healthy Minds and Bodies in Syria and Lebanon, 1899 - 1961"

2013

Michelle Delair Repice

Assistant Director of Graduate Career Development
Washington University, St. Louis, MO

Dissertation: "A Mobile Makeover: The Limits of American Automotive Freedom, 1918-1939"

Nathaniel Green

Assistant Professor of History 
Northern Virginia Community College - Annandale Campus, Annandale, VA

Dissertation: “The Man of the People’: National Politics and the Origins of the Presidential Republic, 1787-1807”

Rajbir Purewal Hazelwood

Director
ImpactED Group, London, UK

Dissertation: "A Diasporic Politics of Belonging: Punjabis in Postwar Britain"

2012

Jennifer Sutton

US Universities Counsellor
City of London School for Girls, London, UK

Dissertation: "The Empire Question: How the South African War, 1899-1902, Shaped Americans' Reactions to U.S. Imperialism"

2011

John Aerni-Flessner

Associate Professor of History
Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI

Dissertation: “‘If We Govern Ourselves, Whose Son Is to Govern Us?’: Youth, Independence and the 1960s in Lesotho”

Tanya L. Roth
Upper School History Teacher
Mary Institute and Country Day School (MICDS), St. Louis, MO

Dissertation:  “Battling for Equality: Sexual Integration in the US Military, 1945-1978”

Daniel Scallet

Lecturer of History
Georgia College, Milledgeville, GA

Dissertation: "An Inglorious War: The Second Seminole War, the Ad Hoc Origins of American Imperialism and the Silence of Slavery"

2010

Kevin Butterfield

Director, John W. Kluge Center
Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

Dissertation: “Unbound by Law: Association and Autonomy in the Early American Republic”

Jill Storm

Writer and Editor
Shmoop, Scottsdale, AZ

Dissertation: “Culture and Exchange: The Jews of Königsberg, 1700-1820"

Ian Wasserman

Assistant Professor of History
University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, AL

Dissertation: “Black Vienna, Red Vienna: The Struggle for Intellectual and Political Hegemony in Interwar Vienna, 1918-1938”

2009

Keona Ervin

Associate Professor of Women, Gender, and Social Science
Bowdoin College, Brunswick, ME

Dissertation: “A Decent Living Out of Our Work: Black Women’s Labor Activism in St. Louis, 1929-45”

Michael Markus

Associate Professor of History/Political Science
Alabama State University, Montgomery, AL

Dissertation: “Political Passions: Local Parties and National Politics in Leeds, 1832-1867”

Alberto Sahagun

Lecturer of History
California State Polytechnic University - Pomona, Pomona, CA

Dissertation: “The Birth of Liberalism: The Making of Liberal Political Thought in Spain, France and England, 1808-1823”

2008

Mohammad Masad

Co-Chair, Assistant Professor of Humanities and Social Sciences
Zayed University - Dubai

Dissertation: “The Medieval Islamic Apocalyptic Tradition: Divination, Prophecy and the End of Time in the 13th Century Eastern Mediterranean”

Books by Our PhDs

  • Aerni-Flessner, John. Dreams for Lesotho: Independence, Foreign Assistance, and Development. University of Notre Dame Press. Published as part of the Kellogg Institute Series on Democracy and Development.
     
  • Cawthra, Benjamin. Blue Notes in Black and White: Photography and Jazz. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011.
     
  • Cheng, Linsun. Banking in Modern China: Entrepreneurs, Professional Managers, and the Development of Chinese Banks, 1897-1937. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003.
     
  • Cogswell, Thomas. The Blessed Revolution: English Politics and the Coming of War, 1621-1624. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989;
    ~Home Divisions: Aristocracy, the State and Provincial Conflict. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998.
     
  • Ervin, Keona K. Gateway to Equality: Black Women and the Struggle for Economic Justice in St. Louis. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2017.
     
  • Feurer, Rosemary. Radical Unionism in the Midwest, 1900-1950. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2006.
     
  • Floyd, Richard D. Church, Chapel and Party: Religious Dissent and Political Modernization in Nineteenth-Century England. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008.
     
  • Follett, Richard R. Evangelism, Penal Theory and the Politics of Criminal Law Reform in England, 1808-30. London: Palgrave Press, 2001.
     
  • Forslund, Catherine. Anna Chennault: Informal Diplomacy and Asian Relations. Wilmington: SR Books, 2002.
     
  • Gesink, Indira Falk. Islamic Reform and Conservatism: al-Azhar and the Evolution of Modern Sunni Islam. London: I. B. Tauris, 2010;
    ~Barefoot Millionaire: John Baldwin and the Founding of Baldwin Wallace University. Ohio: Baldwin Wallace University Press.
     
  • Greene, Megan J. The Origins of the Developmental State in Taiwan: Science Policy and the Quest for Modernization. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2008.
     
  • Hamilton, Phillip. The Making and Unmaking of a Revolutionary Family: The Tuckers of Virginia, 1752-1830. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2003.
     
  • Labendz, Jacob Ari, editor. Jewish Property After 1945: Cultures and Economies of Ownership, Loss, Recovery, and Transfer. Routledge, 2018.
     
  • Leighton, Denys. The Greenian Moment: T. H. Green, Religion and Political Argument in Victorian Britain. Exeter, UK, and Charlottesville, Virginia: Imprint Academic, 2004;
    ~Lives of Victorian Political Figures, Part IV, Volume 2: Green and Morris. London: Pickering and Chatto, 2009.
     
  • Lopatin-Lummis, Nancy. Political Unions, Popular Politics, and the Great Reform Act of 1832. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999;
    ~Public Life and Public Lives: Politics and Religion in Modern British History: Essays in Honour of Richard W. Davis. Malden, MA: Wiley- Blackwell, 2008.
     
  • Mayers, Ruth E. 1659: The Crisis of the Commonwealth. Rochester: Boydell and Brewer, 2004.
     
  • McCurdy, John Gilbert. Citizen Bachelors: Manhood and the Creation of the United States. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2009.
     
  • Muldoon, Andrew. Empire, Politics and the Creation of the 1935 India Act: Last Act of the Raj. London: Ashgate, 2009.
     
  • Pietz, David Allen. Engineering the State: The Huai River and Reconstruction in Nationalist China, 1927-37. New York: Routledge, 2002.
     
  • Robertson, James. Gone Is the Ancient Glory: Spanish Town, Jamaica, 1534-2000. Kingston: Ian Randle, 2005.
     
  • Rutz, Michael A. The British Zion: Congregationalism, Politics, and Empire, 1790-1850. Waco: Baylor University Press, 2011.
     
  • Sommers, Susan Mitchell. Parliamentary Politics of a County and its Town: General Elections in Suffolk and Ipswich in the Eighteenth Century. Westport: Greenwood Press, 2002.
     
  • Sturtz, Linda L. Within Her Power: Propertied Women in Colonial Virginia. New York: Routledge, 2002.
     
  • Thomas, Samuel S. Creating Communities in Restoration England: Parish and Congregation in Oliver Heywood’s Halifax. Leiden: Brill, 2013.
     
  • Todd, Margo. Christian Humanism and the Puritan Social Order. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987;
    ~The Culture of Protestantism in Early Modern Scotland. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002.
     
  • Vostral, Sharra Louise. Under Wraps: A History of Menstrual Hygiene Technology. Lanham: Lexington Books, 2008.
     
  • Wasserman, Janek. Black Vienna: The Radical Right in the Red City: 1918-1938. Cornell University Press, 2014.
  • Wei, C. X. George. Sino-American Economic Relations, 1944-1949. Westport: Greenwood Press, 1997.
     
  • Weiser, Brian. Charles II and the Politics of Access. Rochester, NY: Boydell Press, 2003.
     
  • Westhoff, Laura M. A Fatal Drifting Apart: Democratic Social Knowledge and Chicago Reform. Columbus: The Ohio State University Press, 2007.