Graduate News and Awards 2020-2021
Year-End 2020-2021
The History Department congratulates our 2021 departmental prize winners:
Marcos de Almeida, Harold Perkin Prize for Best Dissertation, for "Speaking of Slavery: Strategies and Moral Imagination in the Lower Congo (Early Times to the 19th Century)."
John Branch, (Co-winner) George Romani Prize for Best First-Year Paper
John Pollard, (Co-winner) George Romani Prize for Best First-Year Paper
Holly Dayton, T. W. Heyck Prize for Graduate Research in British or Irish History, for “Cultural Commerce in the Dominions: Making the British World"
Ana Rosado, Lacey Baldwin Smith Prize for Excellence in Teaching
Colin Bos, Alexa de Leon, and Conrad Hirano, Henry Binford Prize for Best Teaching Team
We also salute our spring PhD recipients, Brian Forman ("Science and Security: Constructing the Modern Chinese Citizen, 1900-1966) and Jonathan Ng ("The Unquenchable Fire: The Arms Trade and Reproduction of the US Empire, 1960-1988."
We also celebrate all the students who earned their PhDs since June 2020, including Keith Clark (Summer 2020), Gideon Cohn-Postar (Summer 2020), Marcos de Almeida (Summer 2020), Myisha Eatmon (Summer 2020), William Fitzsimons (Summer 2020), Sean Harvey (Summer 2020), Laura McCoy (Summer 2020), and Alana Toulin (Fall 2020). We celebrate the summer 2021 PhD recipients: Michelle Bezark, Ana Rosado, and Gabrielle Guillerm.
Current Grads
Teng Li has accepted an offer of Assistant Professor of Legal Studies at Nova Southeastern University.
Jonathan Ng has accepted the Jay T. Walker Postdoctoral Fellowship in Twentieth-Century U.S. and World History at the University of Tulsa for 2021-22.
Teresa Alvarado Patlán has received a Ford Foundation Predoctoral Fellowship which provides three years of external funding.
Chernoh Bah carried out a series of investigative reports on corruption in Sierra Leone, resulting in several articles published on the Africanist Press website and feature interviews by the BBC and Deutsche Welle. The audio for the DW interview can be found here, and the Africanist press reports here, also here, and additionally here.
Elizabeth Barahona was inducted into the Edward A. Bouchet Graduate Honor Society for those who demonstrate academic and personal excellence and who exemplify leadership, character, service, and advocacy for traditionally underrepresented students.
Ruby Daily published an article in The Times (London) about her research on responses to Alfred Kinsey’s research on sexuality. The article can be found here. She is also a finalist for the WW Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship in Women’s Studies.
Bright Gyamfi was one of Northwestern's two honorable mentions for the McBright Award, an award to the TGS graduate student who most goes “above and beyond in any or all of the areas of diversity, service, and engagement.” In addition, his recent blog post for Africa Is a Country about Anani Dzidzienyo has now been translated into Portuguese for the Projeto Cultural Dacosta. Bright will also present on a panel, “Rethinking Black Internationalism: New Directions in Historical Radicalism,” organized jointly by Africa is a Country and the Ghana Studies Association. His article, “From Nkrumah’s Black Star to the African Diaspora: Ghanaian Intellectual Activists and the Development of Black Studies,” is accepted for publication in a forthcoming special issue of the Journal of African American History. He has also published a review of Jeffrey Ahlman’s Living with Nkrumahism: Nation, State, and Pan-Africanism in Ghana in the African Studies Review, available in pre-print form here.
Marcos Leitão de Almeida had an article on slave sacrifices in the Upemba Depression in the 10th century CE accepted for publication in Azania.
Lois Hao recently presented a paper at the 2020 December conference of the Oxford Women's Leadership Symposium (OWLS) based on her first dissertation chapter, titled “the Pure, Pious, and Patriotic: Morality and Religiosity in Chinese Women’s Committed Singlehood at the Turn of the Twentieth Century.” She has also been invited to attend OWLS’s March conference where she will present another chapter.
Carl Creason has received a Research Travel Grant from Notre Dame's Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism to support his dissertation research.
Youjia Li organized a panel with Guangshuo Yang (see below), "The Questions of East Asian Animalities: Capital, Politics, and Entangled Cultures across Species Boundaries," for the recent American Academy of Religion annual meeting. The panel will also be featured at the annual conference of the Association for Asian Studies in early 2021. She has had her article, “The Flowing Chō: Cart Transportation and the Redefinition of Early Modern Urban Space,” accepted for publication in the Journal of Japanese Studies, tentatively scheduled for publication in the winter (February) 2024 issue, Volume 50, Number 1. She has also been offered a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard University’s Reischauer Institute for 2021-2022.
Hope McCaffrey, who has been working as a researcher with the Chicago History Museum, is one of the contributing writers for their new online exhibition "Concert is Power" on the first generation of Black Chicagoans and their activism.
Andrea Rosengarten has won a Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Completion Fellowship for 2021-22 as well as an ESKAS/Fulbright Fellowship from the Swiss government.
Sean Harvey has been awarded the W. Turrentine Jackson Award for the best dissertation from the Pacific Coast Branch of the AHA and has also had an article accepted for publication in Modern American History.
Emiliano Aguilar has accepted a graduate internship in Weinberg College’s Arch Scholars program for the 2021-2022 academic year. He has also published an article, “East Chicago’s Failed Utopian Visions,” in Belt Magazine.
Colin Bos has had his article, "John Augustus Abayomi Cole and the Search for an African Science, 1885-1898," accepted for publication in a forthcoming issue of Isis.
Incoming first-year student Alison Choi has received a fellowship from her alma mater, Pomona College, to support her graduate training.
Ming-hsi Chu’s chapter, “State Violence and Transitional Justice,” (in Chinese) has passed the final round of review for inclusion in in a grade-12 history textbook to be published in June and to be used in senior high schools from September 2021. The textbook is published by Lungteng, Taiwan's largest high school textbook publisher in general and largest history textbook publisher in particular.
Bogdan Pavlish has won an Armenian Studies Scholarship from the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation for 2020-2022 and has had his article, “Relics in Exile: A Collection of Armenian Sacred Objects between Poland-Lithuania and the Ottoman Empire, 1672-1699," accepted for publication in the Journal of Early Modern History.
Melody Shum has received a grant from the American Society for Legal History to support her dissertation research.
Rita Velasco has accepted a graduate internship in Weinberg College’s Arch Scholars program for the 2021-2022 academic year.
Charlotte Rosen published an essay in the Washington Post’s “Made by History” section on the disenfranchisement of those in pretrial detention, and a critical review in the Nation of Aaron Sorkin’s The Trial of the Chicago 7.
Jayson Porter was offered and accepted a position on the Editorial Committee of the North American Congress on Latin America. He also published a co-authored article on environmental racism in Mexico for OkayAfrica, which can be found here. He was also the recipient of this year’s WCAS Graduate Teaching Award! He has been invited by the Organic Trade Association to participate in a dialogue at the United Nations’ 2021 Food Systems Summit. He has also been offered an internship with the Organic Center for next year. He also publisherd an essay in the Washington Post's "Made By History" section.
Elsa de la Rosa’s article, “Anti-Chinese Sentiment Across the Mexican Ideological and Social Spectrum,” has been accepted for publication in the 2021 volume of History & Perspectives.
Marquis Taylor has had a peer-reviewed data article published in the Journal of Slavery and Data Preservation.
Conrad Hirano has won the Japan Foundation’s 2021-2022 Japanese Studies Doctoral Fellowship award which will support his work for 12 months.
Angela Tate is starting a position as the Curator of Women’s History at the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture. Her work there will include research, programming, teaching, and exhibition development and will provide her with direct access to materials she will be using for her dissertation research.
Lizzie Howell has won a DAAD research grant from the German Academic Exchange Service to support her dissertation research.
Matthew Foreman was awarded the WCAS/TGS Teaching Fellowship for 2021 for which he will teach a first-year seminar on Maoism in the Spring. He has also won and accepted a Buffett Global Impacts Fellowship for 2021-22.
Rebecca Rwakabukoza has won a Forris Jewett Moore Fellowship in History from Amherst College for the 2021-2022 academic year.
Melody Shum has had both a panel/roundtable proposal and a paper accepted by the Engaging with Vietnam conference, to be held in conjunction with the International Convention of Asia Scholars in Kyoto in August. Her paper is "Remembering the Underground in South China: Memoirs, Autobiographies, and Biographies of Revolutionaries from Central Vietnam (1880s to 1940s)” and the panel is “Saigon Social Sciences Hub: Conflict, Memory, and Identity in Modern Vietnam.” She is also part of a European Commission-funded team that submitted a European Policy Brief on Vietnam’s Covid-suppression efforts which will be presented to the European Union External Action Service and then published as an academic article. Lastly, she has been invited to join a multi-university French research project, “L’intermédiation dans l’organisation du travail migrant au sein de l’empire colonial français d’Asie et du Pacifique, du début du 19e au milieu du 20e siècle.” She has also been accepted into the Paris Program in Critical Theory’s exchange program with the École normale supérieure for 2021-2022.
Guangshuo Yang presented a paper at the American Academy of Religion's annual conference entitled “Protecting the Mind, Civilizing the World: Buddhist Pro-Animal Activism in Republican China." The panel, "The Questions of East Asian Animalities: Capital, Politics, and Entangled Cultures across Species Boundaries," was one he organized with Youjia Li (see above) and will also be featured at the annual conference of the Association for Asian Studies in early 2021.
Emily Kamm has been accepted into the Dumbarton Oaks Plant Humanities Summer Program.
Caitlin Monroe has accepted a Buffett Global Impacts Fellowship for 2021-22.
Hazal Ozdemir has received a summer research grant from MENA.
Dexter Fergie published a review in The New Republic of Samuel Zipp’s book on Wendell Willkie.
Claire Arnold has won the NACBS Dissertation Fellowship. She also published an essay in the AHA's Perspectives on the insights into social distancing she has gleaned from her dissertation research.